King of the Ring 1994: Owen Hart Wins the Future, and WWF Lets Roddy Piper Close the Show

Razor Ramon and Bam Bam Bigelow are too competent to make eight minutes painful, but the tournament gives them little incentive to build anything elaborate. Bigelow attacks early, Razor absorbs the power offense, and the match settles into the basic contrast everyone expected before the bell.

The finish is the best piece of craft. Bigelow goes upstairs, Razor catches him in motion and turns the mistake into a pin. It is efficient rather than memorable, which describes much of this tournament before Owen Hart starts bending the evening toward himself.

Five and a half minutes feels considerably longer when neither wrestler can create momentum. Mabel has the size advantage, IRS has the veteran shortcuts, and the match still spends most of its life searching for a reason to become interesting.

IRS eventually shakes the ropes as Mabel climbs, knocks him down and steals the pin. It advances a bracket. That is approximately the full list of accomplishments.

Owen Hart spends the night making limited time feel like a creative restriction rather than an excuse. Tatanka attacks before the bell and gives Owen a physical match to survive, while Owen keeps changing the pace whenever the action threatens to settle.

The reversal of Tatanka's sunset flip gives Owen a clean enough first step toward the crown without exposing the larger plan. Nothing here approaches Owen's best work, but the match has urgency, crowd involvement and a winner who increasingly feels like the point of the entire tournament.

The 1-2-3 Kid's best weapon is that every match can look like it might end by accident. Jarrett controls most of the four and a half minutes, the Kid keeps throwing himself into sudden counters, and the short runtime makes the urgency feel natural rather than rushed.

The small-package upset works because Jarrett has been treating him like an inconvenience. The three piledrivers afterward are more memorable than the match and give the Kid's next round an immediate story: he is not merely an underdog now. He is an underdog who may not be physically able to continue.

This is the match that proves Diesel can be more than a silhouette standing behind Shawn Michaels. Bret Hart gives him a structure built around size, damage and increasingly desperate counters, then spends twenty-two minutes making the Intercontinental Champion look like a plausible threat to the biggest championship in the company.

The leg work is especially useful because it gives Bret a believable answer to the size difference. Diesel sells it, recovers, attacks the back and gradually turns the match into something much more competitive than his résumé suggested at the time. Michaels' interference adds heat without overwhelming the middle.

The disqualification is frustrating in isolation. Jim Neidhart runs in after the Jackknife and saves Bret's title. By the end of the show, the decision acquires a reason: Neidhart was protecting Bret's championship so Owen could eventually take it from him. That does not make the finish satisfying, but it makes it coherent.

Five minutes is too short to be boring for long, which is the nicest advantage this semifinal has. IRS controls Razor with familiar shortcuts and a reverse chinlock, Razor begins the comeback, and the Razor's Edge arrives almost as soon as the match remembers there is supposed to be a finish.

The outcome never feels uncertain. The wrestling does not provide enough distraction from that certainty.

Three minutes and thirty-seven seconds should not be enough time to have one of the best matches on a pay-per-view. Owen Hart and the 1-2-3 Kid apparently regard that as a dare.

Owen attacks before the bell because the Kid is already damaged. From there, the match turns into a sprint of moonsaults, cradles, kicks, German suplexes and counters that never feel random because the entire premise is speed. The Kid cannot afford a long match. Owen does not intend to give him one.

The powerbomb into the Sharpshooter is a brutal, decisive finish. The match's only real flaw is that it ends exactly when the audience realizes how special the pairing could be.

The match has enough size to qualify as infrastructure. The Headshrinkers are newly positioned as babyface champions, Yokozuna is sliding away from the world-title picture, and Crush is still carrying the remains of his feud with Lex Luger.

There are useful bursts when Fatu and Samu can kick and move, but the middle becomes a collection of heavy offense without much shape. Luger eventually arrives, distracts Crush and helps create the opening for the champions to retain.

It is not a disaster. It is also difficult to explain why the tournament needed to stop for it.

The tournament final should feel like the culmination of Owen Hart's night. Instead, six and a half minutes leave Owen and Razor just enough time to establish the matchup before the story takes over.

Razor's size gives him control, Owen needles him with slaps and shortcuts, and the match begins to find a rhythm before Razor dumps Owen to the floor. Then Jim Neidhart arrives, attacks Razor and reveals why he saved Bret's championship earlier.

The interference improves the larger angle while limiting the match. Owen's coronation does the real heavy lifting. He is delighted with himself, Neidhart crowns him, and the 'King of Harts' identity gives the Bret feud another layer immediately.

WWF spends the night advertising the New Generation and then closes the pay-per-view with two men in their forties punching each other while a Piper impersonator participates from ringside. The irony does not require excavation equipment.

Piper and Lawler know how to get reactions, but the wrestling is slow, repetitive and almost entirely dependent on personality. The sleeper lasts too long, the referee bump feels ancient even by 1994 standards, and the ringside fan has to wait through an absurdly slow count before knocking Lawler's feet off the ropes.

The largest problem is placement. As a novelty grudge match in the middle of the card, this might have survived. As the final image after Owen Hart has just been crowned, it feels like WWF interrupting its own future to visit the past.