Chris Jericho Discusses How Deal Between AEW And Owen Hart Foundation Came Together

On September 20, AEW announced a partnership with the Owen Hart Foundation to honor the legacy of Owen.

AEW will honor Owen by immortalizing him in the upcoming AEW console game and holding an annual Owen Hart Cup tournament.

Speaking to Stephanie Chase, Chris Jericho detailed his involvement in bringing Owen’s widow Martha and AEW President Tony Khan together.

“It was a passion project for me and obviously for Martha and Tony. 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. That’s the main reason why we all wanted this to happen, so we can celebrate Owen Hart’s career and the contributions that he made. He was a pioneer,” said Jericho.

Jericho continued by saying, “‘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. Owen Hart was the guy. To an extent, Shawn Michaels and Ricky Steamboat, but Owen Hart, to me, 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 and disciple. That’s the reason we wanted to do this. We’ll do the Owen Hart Cup and tournament and make people feel good about Owen rather than sad. We know what happened, 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 and really happy the deal got done. 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.”

In May 2020, Martha said in an interview with Jericho that she was open to honoring Owen in some way, even mentioning NJPW as a possibility. You can find her full comments by clicking here.

You can learn more about the partnership between AEW and the Owen Hart Foundation by clicking here.

If you use any of the quotes above, please credit the original source with a h/t and link back to Fightful for the transcription.