Bret/Owen feud

By Scott Keith on September 3, 2012

One thing I've always wondered about-During the Bret/Owen program,after Owen IIRC got a rollup pinfall win in the first encounter,why did he then lose the next 4000 rematches? I mean,I was like 14 and did not have the net or read the sheets so I was still basically a mark,but obviously I knew the matches were fixed and I never understood why you would just want to absolutely bury the guy the way they did with Owen. He lost regular matches,cage matches,tag matches,he basically became "that guy who gets pinned by Bret Hart." Even if they felt he couldn't draw as champ (probably true) why not have him lose to Bret once or twice and move on to a new program (maybe IC title) instead of having his heat just totally extinguished.

It's pretty standard operating procedure, or at least it used to be. Owen got hot after beating Bret at Wrestlemania but wasn't going to be a long-term main eventer, so they milked the feud for everything it was worth and then discarded Owen back to the midcard. That's what happened with Hogan's challengers all the time in the 80s. Plus Owen was basically on the verge of getting fired and retiring from the business in late 93 when they came up with the program anyway, so it's not like he was in any worse of a position than he was going to be if they didn't do it.

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