4 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE Raw (March 14)

4. Selling A Product Sight Unseen

You really can’t fault Kevin Owens for this, and you also can’t fault “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. But it’s really tough to carry a program from only one side.

Kevin Owens opened Raw by celebrating that he’s going to WrestleMania to host the KO Show with Austin as his guest. He bragged about his intellect and cleverness in turning a lost opportunity in the tag title match into a victory by calling out the Rattlesnake. And then he talked about drinking a Canadian beer after smearing Austin all over Texas… and then he Stunnered a cameraman.

Truthfully, it was a perfectly fine promo segment from KO. You expect that sort of thing from Owens, and he has good subject matter in Austin. The problem here is that Austin isn’t there to respond, and he can’t show up on Raw to respond. The entire premise of Stone Cold’s appearance at Mania is that he’s going to have it out (verbally) with Owens on the KO Show. So he can’t come to Raw to rebut Owens, because that would defeat the purpose of his appearance at Mania… unless it was for a match.

And that’s the problem. Because they’re building to a talk show appearance three weeks out, it’s going to be a one-sided affair. Austin’s response and confrontation is the selling point, so he can’t burn it on Raw, so we’re stuck with this, and that makes it disappointing and unfulfilling.