Is Christian The Next Owen Hart?

If Jay "Christian" Reso were told that he might be the next Owen Hart, he'd probably be thrilled. And why not? Owen was an incredible athlete, an entertaining performer, and a great man.

There's no doubt that there are a lot of parallels between the two. Both are fairly small (both around 5'10), both had more successful older brothers (or "brother" in Christian's case), both play(ed) great heels, both can/could do high-flying aerial maneuvers as well as technical mat-wrestling, and both have great senses of humor.

If this was where the similarities ended, this comparison doubtlessly would be nothing short of a great thing for Christian.

...Unfortunately, it's not.

It's no secret that Vince McMahon viewed Owen Hart as "enhancement talent"; in other words, a wrestler who stayed around the mid/upper-mid card, and was used to help get other talent over.

And Owen was effective with this; Stone Cold, Shawn Michaels and Hunter Hearst-Helmsley all feuded with Owen en-route to the top, and potential main-eventers like Ken Shamrock and Goldust certainly got good rubs off their programs with him.

But Owen Hart as a marquee guy? Vince believed that Owen was not "main-event material." Bret Hart has confirmed Vince as saying this, as have Shawn Michaels and HHH.

Not even WCW saw Owen as main-event material; Bret's stated in interviews that, while Eric Bischoff was willing to pick up Bulldog and Neidhart at a price much larger than what WWF was paying them, the offer they had for Owen was actually less than what he was making at WWF (maybe the only such instance of WCW offering less than WWF). Why? They didn't think Owen was top-guy material.

Bret had to fight in order to convince the WWF front office that a brother-vs-brother storyline would work, and that Owen could carry the top of the card.

Of course, Bret proved right, and the Bret vs. Owen feud was one of the best of 1994...but it was the first and last time Owen Hart would ever have a main-event run.

Why do I mention all this?

Well, I don't know if you pay attention to the wrestling newssites (Rajah, Wrestling Observer, sescoops.com, Pwpix.com, etc), but there have been a TON of reports that Vince McMahon isn't hot on Christian...that he sees him as an upper-mid carder and not "main-event material."

I realize that wrestling rumor sites aren't always the most reliable, but Rajah and the Wrestling Observer have proved to be fairly close to accurate in their reportings, especially in the last few months (they're also more discriminate than their counterparts).

So far, the way Christian has been used has only buttressed the credibility of these reports. It's worth noting that Christian was debuted in ECW; certainly if it was believed that Christian could make a big splash, he'd have debuted on one of WWE's top two shows.

While being on ECW isn't intrinsically a "bad" thing, you'd think that a superstar who's already proven he's got talent, mat skills and charisma—and has already had a successful run in WWE—would be on one of the top shows, not the brand that WWE uses as a training ground...or a graveyard for those that WWE believes have peaked and whose best remaining use is to enhance the up-and-comers (see Chris Benoit in 2007).

He was also denied Money in the Bank in favor of CM Punk, a superstar who's already been World Heavyweight Champion and is within spitting distance of becoming a permanent main-eventer.

It's still too early in Christian's second run to tell if he'll be upper-mid-card "enhancement talent" or whether he'll indeed get a main-event push. But there's three things we can determine for sure.e

1.) Christian's use so far probably doesn't bode well for his near-future. An ECW debut may not have been bad had he been traded to Raw or Smackdown during the draft...but this didn't happen, suggesting he'll be on Sci-Fi for most of the next year

2.) An Edge vs. Christian feud seems inevitable. WWE is not stupid enough to miss out on the marketing opportunity/buzz this would create, as fans have been clamoring for this/imagining it for a long time.

Their staredown at Backlash only proves that WWE has intentions to do this at some point. More than likely, this will be a main event (or near-main event) feud, but whether—like Owen with Bret—this will be Christian's only main event program is something that—while debatable—is still (right now) a prospect real enough to be scary.

3.) Vince's penchant for bigger guys doesn't bode well for Christian either. While recent years have shown that Vince is open to smaller guy's with the title--Rey Mysteiro, Eddie Guerrero, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, etc--these guys are still the exception and not the rule.

Maybe I'm being pessimistic. But the future looks like it could be Owen Hart, Part II for Christian; no title run, stuck in upper-mid-card "enhancement talent" land, and having only one main event program with his "brother."

For all these parallels though, there IS one major difference...a difference that gives me comfort...a difference that may keep Christian from becoming Owen Hart part II, and instead lead him to become Owen Hart 2.0: new, improved, and unstoppable.

You see, a number of guys—Shawn Michaels, HHH, and even Bret Hart—have said that Owen Hart didn't really have any drive. His life did not revolve around wrestling the way it did for a lot of the top guys (those three names among them).

For Owen, his life was his family. He viewed wrestling as a 9-5 job where he earned his money, and took it home to his family.

In the opinion of many, this kept him from ascending to the upper echelon, and in fact, it's been said that perhaps that's what he was happy with...that a main event run would have meant more time away from family, something he was not willing to do.

While I don't know Christian, and haven't read too many interviews with him, it would appear that he is far more tenacious and driven; that wrestling for him isn't a necessary evil, but something that he loves and wants to become the best at.

Maybe the office will recognize this. The most passionate guys typically get a main event run, and it does bear noting that he's won he ECW title.

Will Christian's passion allow him to ascend to the main event, thus righting the wrongs of wrestling past? At this point, we can only hope.