Ask 411 Wrestling: Was Owen Hart Considered for a WWF Title Run?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals, to Ask 411 Wrestling. I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling.

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Ticking Time Bomb Taz digresses:

To your knowledge, was there ever any serious talk of having Owen Hart win the world heavyweight title circa 1994 and 1995? He had a clean win over his brother Bret at Wrestlemania X and won the King of the Ring tournament. Since Bret was his brother, I am sure he would have had no problem dropping the belt to him, even if it was for a short reign. Perhaps he could have even been the transitional champion between Bret and Diesel, instead of Bob Backlund. Your thoughts?

Part of me feels like I’ve answered this question before, but I can’t find it kicking around in the archives, so here we go again.

Bruce Prichard was asked this question on his podcast at one point and said that it was certainly discussed, though he didn’t have a lot of details on when, where, why, or how a proposed Owen Hart title reign would occur – which leads me to believe that, if it was talked about, it was probably in a fairly abstract sense.

For what it’s worth, you can see Owen Hart win the WWF Championship – very technically and very briefly – on the Coliseum Video release “Wham, Bam, Bodyslam.” In a match taped exclusively for home video on August 17, 1994 in Portland, Maine, Owen pinned Bret Hart after interference by the heel lumberjacks and was announced as champion, though the referee’s decision was quickly reversed and the match restarted, with Bret then getting the win and his championship reign thus officially being unbroken.

Perhaps one of the most notable things for me about that match is watching Owen celebrate his title win with the Heavenly Bodies, Well Dunn, and Kwang, which just goes to show you how shallow the company’s roster had gotten at that point.

Bryan wonders if the bird isn’t so free after all:

How come in the Dark Side of the Ring on JYD, Michael Hayes wasn’t interviewed despite being in the Dog’s biggest feuds? Hayes is still alive. Does a WWE contract forbid employees from being on the show?

If he’s not outright forbidden from being on the show, he at the very least is smart enough to know that appearing on a documentary for an outside company without WWE’s approval is going to be bad for his employment.

Jonfw2 also has a question about things that were done on tape delay:

When Raw was still an hour, WWF typically ran a live show and then taped 2-3 more for the coming weeks from the same arena.

It appears that Vince and his color guy are actually at ring side for the taped shows, but a couple times a show, you will hear them reference stuff that’s happened in real life since they taped.

For example, they’re on week 3 of taped shows (meaning what you’re watching happened almost a month ago) and they’ll reference something that happened at a house show just a couple of days before the airing.

Did the announcers go in to a studio somewhere every week and edit in the recent updates?

Yup. Or they just sat at ringside not saying anything during the taped shows and recorded all the commentary at the WWF’s production studio in Stamford, Connecticut later on. Jim Cornette has discussed this on his podcast in the past, as he was one of the guys who was doing commentary for the company during its taped Raw era.

Tyler from Winnipeg has a sweet tooth:

Does Samoa Joe get into a wrestling Hall of Fame?

If I had a ballot for a wrestling hall of fame, I wouldn’t vote for him at this point in his career. That’s not meant as a knock on Joe, either. In my mind, to be Hall of Fame worthy, you at the very least have to have a successful main event run in a major promotion somewhere, and that is a box Joe has never checked. He’s been the top guy in a small promotion (ROH), he’s been a secondary guy in a mid-level promotion (AEW/TNA), and he’s been a midcard guy in the world’s biggest promotion (WWE).

He has been a participant in some EXCELLENT professional wrestling matches up and down the line, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think that compensates for his lack of being a main event star when you are casting a Hall of Fame vote.

But, who knows, maybe Twisted Metal on Peacock will be a massive hit and we will have reevaluate this answer.

Ned is coming in hot with a correction:

Love your articles. Doesn’t Wrestlemania XXX count when Daniel Bryan submits Batista?

Ned is referencing the column a couple of weeks ago, when somebody asked me to chronicle the times the WWE Title has changed hands by submission. I summarized seventeen such title changes, but I did inadvertently omit Wrestlemania XXX.

So the number is actually 18, not 17.

Joe has a checkered past:

Recently, I went back through Bret Hart and Roddy Piper’s WCW storylines, and I found them utterly baffling. Nothing really makes much sense, and probably Bret’s was far more confusing than Piper’s.

Can you think of anyone else who an even crazier back history?

The Undertaker.

Kane.

Bray Wyatt.

Abyss.

Basically anybody who has had any sort of “supernatural” or “monster” gimmick for any extended period of time has a convoluted backstory that doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny whatsoever.

That being said, if we eliminate those sorts of people from consideration, there’s still another pair that comes to mind, and they were also part of WCW in its heyday.

I’m talking about Lenny Lane and Lodi.

When Lodi originally came in to WCW, he was the ultimate toady, a flunky of Raven in his flock who, for reasons that were never explained, took his look from Billy Idol and carried around signs like most fans of the era. Meanwhile, Lenny showed up as a personality-less job guy, then became a hired hand for Chris Jericho due to the passing physical resemblance to him and followed that up with a little-remembered gimmick in which he marketed his own brand of “ab solution,” essentially baby oil.

After Raven’s Flock disbanded, Lodi briefly wandered around directionless and tried to find a new master to serve, but that would be scrapped so he and Lodi could become a gay couple. Yet, when real-life television executives decided that gimmick was too controversial for the era, they were revealed to actually be “brothers” . . . but even THAT was too edgy, and eventually they were taken off television altogether.

After some time away, they showed up again playing television censors. Were they actually supposed to be censors? Were their characters just sending up censors in revenge for being taken off TV? If that is what they were doing, were they upset because they were actually gay and being discriminated against, or were the gay personas all a ruse and they were upset about the fact that their groundbreaking gimmicks were discarded? None of this was ever explained.

Then, they vanished out nowhere AGAIN, this time due to real-life television censors not wanting to be made fun of on TNT. When they came back, they were XS, a couple of generic guys who dressed like they came straight from a nightclub. Were they still gay? Why did they drop their prior censor gimmick? Why was Lodi’s name changed to Rave and then to Idol? Again, none of this was ever explained.

Fast forward to early TNA again, and Lenny and Lodi were supposed to ride (each other) again, but Lodi wound up unavailable due to injury, and he was replaced by the wrestler known as Kwee Wee and Angry Alan Funk in WCW, now rechristened Bruce. Why was Lenny suddenly acting overtly gay again when he had apparently abandoned that before? Why were these men now hanging out with the obnoxiously heterosexual Joel Gertner? Once more, none of this was ever explained.

I always liked the wrestlers behind the act, but their character history is a bit of a mess.

Bryan is keeping up appearances:

Was the term “face” in pro wrestling derived from the character “Face” in the A-Team? Or was it the other way around? Or were the 2 things totally unrelated?

It’s just a coincidence.

Of the two, “face” in pro wrestling came first. I don’t know that I can pinpoint the precise origin of the term, but it was used in pro wrestling for decades before the A-Team became a thing in the 1980s.

Even though the wrestling term and the name for the A-Team character reference the same part of the body, they have different meanings. In pro wrestling, “face” is a shortened version of the original term “babyface,” meaning that somebody is clean cut and/or innocent. The character “Face” in the A-Team is called that as a shortened version of the longer nickname “Faceman,” which is meant to reference the fact that he is handsome. Stephen Cannell, the creator of the A-Team has said in interviews that Faceman was a nickname that girls he knew in school used for attractive male students.

Donny from Allentown, PA has a different take:

You answered my question yesterday concerning how to handle Ric Flair’s WCW departure in 1991. I love the formula you came up with except for one thing. I would not have Barry Windham versus Dustin Rhodes in the first round. Dustin was still relatively new to WCW at that point so what would have warranted him a coveted spot in a World Title Tournament match? He was only with the company like 3 or 4 months. I would instead insert Beautiful Bobby Eaton. He just came of a brief TV title run plus stole a fall from Ric Flair in their 2 out of 3 fall championship at the Clash Of Champions. Bobby Eaton vs Barry is what I would have done.

Donny is referencing the most recent edition of the column, in which he asked me about rebooking the 1991 Great American Bash and I proposed a one-night tournament for the WCW Championship as opposed to the single match between Lex Luger and Barry Windham that the company actually ran.

I totally see where Donny is coming from here, and I think the substitution would be a fine one. I was thinking of involving Rhodes despite his short tenure because it would perhaps help establish him as a wunderkind babyface and because he is somebody who even at that early stage could have hung in a match of that importance yet still would have been “beatable” without losing too much steam.

However, Eaton definitely works as somebody who was capable of being beaten but also had enough credibility that he would have worked in the mix.

Night Wolf the Wise is pattering, son:

Everyone is familiar with the NXT North American Championship that was introduced in 2018. I read that this is not an original title. The WWWF had the original North American Championship. Can you give a backstory on the WWWF’s North American championship? Do you know why it was abandoned? And why isn’t it’s lineage recognized with the NXT North American Championship?

Yes, the WWWF introduced a North American Championship in March 1979 (Billy Corgan’s favorite year) in a bid to have a secondary singles title. Ted DiBiase was the inaugural champion, and he didn’t even really do anything to win the belt. He just had it when he debuted in the promotion, everybody acted like he was the champion, and everybody accepted it and moved on. Later the same month, the World Wide Wrestling Federation embarked on its “Get the ‘Wide’ Out” campaign and was renamed the WWF, with the title’s name changing to match.

As champion, DiBiase had programs with the Valiant brothers, Greg Valentine, and some other guys whose names didn’t start with “V.”

However, he ultimately dropped the belt to Pat Patterson on June 19 of 1979, which the Wrestling Observer Newsletter in its obituary of Patterson said was a move made to help Patterson get over for a series of matches he was going to have with WWF Champion Bob Backlund, since Patterson at that point was still a relative unknown to WWF fans and didn’t have the sort of physique that they were used to in their top champions.

As champ, Patterson wrestled a series of rematches against DiBiase and also faced Ivan Putski for the belt several times in addition to the aforementioned matches against Bob Backlund.

Then in the middle of his North American Title reign, Patterson started being referred to as the WWF Intercontinental Champion and a new belt was created. His last recorded match as North American Champion occurred on August 18, 1979, and his first recorded match as Intercontinental Champion was on August 22 , just four days later. The backstory concocted for the change was that Patterson had won a tournament in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil which included the South American Champion, creating a new title that was “intercontinental” in nature. Presumably, the behind the scenes reason for the story was a bid to give Patterson yet more credibility as he continued to face Backlund.

And that was the end of the WWF North American Championship . . .

. . . sort of.

In WWF storylines in the United States, the North American Title was effectively unified into the Intercontinental Title and no longer recognized as a separate championship.

Yet, the WWF had a working relationship with New Japan Pro Wrestling at the time, and, on November 8, 1979 on an NJPW show in Hokkaido, Japan, Seiji Sakaguchi defeated Pat Patterson to become the new WWF North American Champion, even though the WWF at that point had no longer recognized a North American Champion for several months. This was no doubt a bid to give Sakaguchi a bump in the eyes of Japanese fans, as holding an “American” title meant he was a step ahead of many of his counterparts in his home country.

The fact that Sakaguchi held a championship that was on paper affiliated with the WWF was never recognized in the U.S. Instead, he defended the belt exclusively on NJPW shows, facing names like Bad News Allen and Don Muraco. The last defense Sakaguchi made was on March 9, 1981 in Nagoya, and, after that, the title was quietly forgotten about.

Is there a reason that WWE doesn’t acknowledge its prior North American Title in connection with the NXT version of the championship?

Yeah, it’s because nobody remembers the original North American Championship and they have to write in to third-rate pro wrestling columns on the internet to get information about it. If that’s the level of name recognition that your old belt has, it’s not going to do anything to help establish your new belt.

We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.