12 Times WWE Buried Their Own Champions
5. Kevin Owens Can’t Cut It
The live crowd went crazy when Triple H hit a kick > wham > Pedigree on Seth Rollins to hand Kevin Owens the new Universal Title on a plate during the 29 August 2016 Raw. KO was shocked and stunned by all of this, but pinned Seth to capitalise on the chaos and cement his place at the top of the flagship's tree.
Then, rather typically, the story went absolutely nowhere. Hunter didn't become a mentor to Owens for longer than a cup of coffee, and Kev started buddying up to Chris Jericho instead. Together, they ensured that Owens remained champ. It was fine for KO to lean on Jericho for help. A lot of heels do that. However, the end of his reign truly was brutal.
Goldberg hammered Owens at Fastlane 2017 to win the belt, and that was that. A promising split story between Kevin and Chris was shoved down to United States Title level whilst Goldberg worked a rematch vs. Brock Lesnar. Lord only knows why WWE seemed so dead set against following up on the newsworthy start to KO's run as Universal Champion.
The short build towards a match with Bill also portrayed Owens as somebody who had next to no chance against the ex-WCW squash match master. In promos, Goldberg acted like Kevin was some independent wrestling scrub who got lucky and didn't belong in the ring with him. Then, the match at Fastlane reflected his attitude.
It was one WWE apparently shared for real. Otherwise, they wouldn't have buried KO like they did.