Owen Hart Wrestling With Angels

However, disagreement began to leak in as miscommunications amid the two grew, and the brothers-in-law were forced to do battle in a competition final to crown the first WWF European title holder.  Owen lost the final of a tournament to Bulldog, and the seeds appeared to be sown for a cruel break-up of the tag team champions.

Owen and Bulldog were doing battle again on an edition of RAW in spring '97 for the European championship; at what time Bret Hart came out and asked the two to listen to what he had to say and not the American fans.  Bret finalised his heel status here, asked Owen and Bulldog to join him in reforming a new and better Hart Foundation.

 Their goals would be to wipe out foes like Steve Austin and to show American Wrestling Fans how real heroes acted.  The collection soon added Jim Neidhart and Brian Pillman, and became the most despised stable of wrestlers in the United States while remaining particularly established in Canada and Europe.

As part of the Hart Foundation, Owen found his stock on the rise in the WWF.  In May 1997, Owen won the WWF IC Title from the self proclaimed “Peoples Champ” The Rock, and quickly found himself feuding with Steve Austin.

 In July, at a PPV incident held in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, named surprisingly named “Canadian Stampede” Owen pinned Austin in a 10-man tag contest main event, setting up a SummerSlam IC Title match between the two stars.  The SummerSlam match saw Owen temporarily paralysed Austin with a version of the Tombstone Piledriver; Austin recovered enough just to finish the match (winning the title from Owen with what seemed to be THE worst looking roll up in WWF History!), and would be back at 100% following the damage by year's ending.