6 Ups And 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (May 25th)
3. Owens Is A Big Deal
WWE is going all-in on making Kevin Owens look like a killer. He could have debuted a few months from now, destroying Zack Ryder or even Dolph Ziggler, but instead, Owens has targeted the biggest dog in the yard and taken him down twice. Despite making his first appearance on Raw last week, Owens got a video package to really explain who he is Monday night. Perhaps the biggest indicator that WWE is taking Owens seriously is that John Cena basically tried to channel the Cena haters into chanting Fight Owens fight at him rather than Cena sucks. Cena has long acknowledged the fans who boo him, but it often is in a joking, almost dismissive way. Monday, he not only acknowledged them, but he noted that Owens is their avatar of the month and could very well be one of the most serious ones to date. The fact that Sundays match is being billed as a non-title champion versus champion match means that the result is wide open. In some ways, WWE could have been really bold and booked a U.S. Championship match, have Owens win and make Cena have to go to NXT to win the title back. Perhaps that still is in the cards.
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
