The Surprising Reason Kevin Owens Never Wants to Win the Intercontinental Title Again

Since WrestleMania, Kevin Owens has been riding high alongside Sami Zayn as the reigning Undisputed WWE Tag Team champions. The duo shows no sign of slowing down, and you'd imagine getting the titles off of them will be a challenging task for other tag teams, especially considering how tough it was for Owens and Zayn to win them in the first place.

However, like most Superstars, the allure of being a singles champion sometimes eclipses the desire to dominate the tag team scene in WWE. Curiously, Owens recently went on the record and ultimately ruled out winning a specific championship again – and the reason why is surprisingly heartfelt and genuine!

The title in question? The WWE Intercontinental Championship. Despite holding the title on two different occasions in the mid-2010s, Owens has no desire to compete for that championship ever again. In a recent interview with the Love Wrestling podcast, Owens revealed that he has no plans to chase after the Intercontinental title out of respect for the late, great Owen Hart.

RELATED: Kevin Owens Freaks Out Over Video Showing Elias And Ezekiel Together

"It means a lot," Owens admitted before revealing that the combined total days as Intercontinental champion for both Superstars stands at 132 days, lasting over two title reigns. Wrestling statistics work in strange ways, and this is one of the most heartwarming stats we've ever encountered!

"It's funny because I'd love to win the Intercontinental Championship back, but I also don't want to break that similarity," confessed Owens. "I want to share that with Owen, you know? So it's a really conflicting feeling, but it's really cool to have that for sure."

While Owens' combined run as Intercontinental Champion lasted for just 132 days, it still produced some classic matches, like this title defense against Dolph Ziggler at WWE Fastlane 2016:

Like many current WWE Superstars, Owens grew up watching some of the greatest rivalries in pro wrestling history play out every week. Owens specifically mentioned the Bret Hart/Owen Hart family dynamic as one of the reasons he felt a bond with Owen Hart as a fan.

"I saw Bret trying to cheat [against Diesel]. He wrapped cables around Diesel's legs," Owens recalled. "At that point, I was a kid with morals. I was like, 'What the hell is that?' And then Owen came out to try and stop him. At the time, I didn't know the dynamics of the story. All I knew was Owen was the valiant younger brother who tried to stop his older brother from cheating. I immediately latched onto Owen, like, 'He's just like me. Bret's like my big brother.'"

Of course, Owens is referring to the classic dynamic between the Hart brothers, as Owen would famously go on to perfectly play the part of the jealous younger sibling and have many classic matches with his older brother in the process. Luckily for the WWE Universe, Owens and his tag team partner Sami Zayn have already had plenty of classic matches against each other, meaning their alliance is (hopefully) rock-solid moving forward.

So while it's heartwarming to find out Kevin Owens has no intentions of fighting to regain the Intercontinental Championship he lost for the last time in 2016, let's take everything the tag champ has to say with a grain of salt. After all, he is only a few weeks removed from challenging Gunther for that very title! 

However, if Kevin Owens truly wants to follow in Owen Hart's footsteps, there is another statistic worth chasing: 

Owen held the tag team championship for a combined 491 days. If Owens also wants to share that with his childhood idol, by our calculations, he still has well over a year to go!

But hey, if anybody can do it, KO can. 

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