Yahoo News Exclusive: Chris Jericho talks AEW honouring Owen Hart's legacy
AEW announced last week that they have partnered with The Owen Hart Foundation to honour the legacy of Owen Hart, with merchandise and an annual Owen Hart Cup Tournament.
Owen tragically passed away in 1999 and last year his life was the subject of an episode of Vice series Dark Side of the Ring, narrated by AEW's Chris Jericho.
Speaking to Digital Spy last year, Jericho had said he'd love to see Owen's wife Martha do something with AEW, adding that "the spirit of Owen Hart lives on in AEW".
Now, speaking exclusively to Digital Spy following the announcement of AEW's partnership with The Owen Hart Foundation, Jericho explained how the deal came together.
"It was a passion project for me and obviously for Martha and Tony (Khan)," Jericho said. "We worked on it for a long time, about a year and a half, to put the deal together and figure out what we wanted to do.
"I just knew I wanted Owen's legacy to be something positive and something great as far as wrestling goes, rather than just be dwelling on his death. I think that's the main reason why we all wanted this to happen, so that we can celebrate Owen Hart's career and the contributions that he made. He was a pioneer.
"We'll do the Owen Hart Cup and tournament and make people feel good about Owen rather than feel sad. We know what happened to him but that was over 20 years ago. Let's move forward remembering his amazing contributions and legacy in the ring that still resonate to this day.
"I'm really excited about it and very happy about it, I'm really happy the deal got done, he continued. "We put a lot of time and work to make it happen, but it did and now we can move forward and have great times with Owen involved, which I'm sure he would love as well."
Jericho added that for anyone questioning Owen's connection to AEW, it's because of his influence that Jericho became a wrestler.
"'What's his connection to AEW?' some people are saying. Well, one of the connections is that he's specifically the reason I got into wrestling," he explained. "Owen Hart was the guy. To an extent, Shawn Michaels and Ricky Steamboat, but Owen Hart was the one to me where I thought, 'I want to be like that guy.'
"There is your connection to AEW. The original AEW face of the company is an Owen Hart fanatic, an Owen Hart disciple. That's the reason we wanted to do this."
Catch AEW Dynamite live every Thursday at 1am in the UK and Rampage every Saturday at 3am on FITE with an AEW Plus subscription. US customers can also watch both shows on TNT, and in the UK, Dynamite repeats air on ITV4.
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