More on AEW Partnering with Owen Hart Foundation for Owen Hart Cup

As noted before, AEW announced earlier this week that they have recently signed a partnership deal with the Owen Hart Foundation for the sale of Owen Hart-based merchandise and the debut of a new annual tournament called the Owen Hart Cup.

Stephanie Chase held a recent interview with Chris Jericho. One of the topics discussed included Jericho revealing that AEW and Martha Hart had been in talks for around a year and a half regarding a potential partnership deal.

“I mean it was a passion project [Owen Hart/AEW deal] for me obviously and obviously for Martha [Hart] and Tony [Khan]. We worked on it for a long time, about a year-and-a-half to put the deal together, figure out what we wanted to do but 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 and I think that’s the main reason why we all wanted this to happen is that we can celebrate Owen Hart’s career, the contributions that he made. He was a pioneer. What’s his connection to AEW some people are saying. Well one of the connections is that he’s specifically the reason why I got into wrestling. Owen Hart was the guy. To an extent Shawn Michaels and Ricky Steamboat but Owen Hart was the one to me that like, ‘I wanna be like that guy’ and so there’s your connection to AEW. The original AEW face of the company is an Owen Hart fanatic, is an Owen Hart disciple and that’s the reason why we wanted to do this and we’ll do the Owen Hart Cup, do the tournament and just make people feel good about Owen rather than feel sad.”

Dave Meltzer reported in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that AEW’s trademark filing for the “King of Hearts” from this past July was recently denied approval by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Meltzer reported that AEW’s trademark is currently being blocked by an unknown entity that was not stated.

Meltzer reported in Friday’s Daily Update that Tony Khan recently stated that AEW’s trademark filing for “King of Hearts” was never planned to be used as the name of the trophy nor the tournament itself for their upcoming Owen Hart Cup tournament and instead was going to be a gift given to Hart’s widow Martha.

Transcript h/t: PostWrestling.com