10 Times WWE Was Even Dumber Than WCW
7. The Sad, Incomprehensible Career Arc Of Kevin Owens
WCW contrived to strip real, genuine stars of their value by booking them so hopelessly that it felt like a hassle to invest in them.
Vince Russo in particular accelerated through so many turns, swerve turns, title changes and the like that the stars weren't much of anything: they weren't heroes, villains, Champions, nothing, simply performers in a car crash show that was either real or fake, beholden to a script you were ritually told controlled everything.
WWE, for unfathomable reasons, has applied this booking philosophy to Kevin Owens.
Kevin Owens, strap in, was: a prizefighter, a chickensh*t heel afraid of the very reason he came to WWE, a Universal Champion thanks to the assistance of Triple H, in an association that was never developed despite a further tease in 2017, a psychopath who would headbutt Vince McMahon and toady up to his daughter, a man who was fired and quit in the same year, only to return immediately on both occasions, a slob babyface and then immediately a heel and almost immediately a babyface again, the next Stone Cold Steve Austin and a man rendered impotent by authority almost immediately after that, and then, a man who was fired again, only to return immedia-
He was also, amid all of this, the saviour of SmackDown, who fought for his locker room, and was subsequently drafted to a different locker room, undoing an entire summers' worth of storytelling.