8 Recent Wrestlers We Didn't Expect To Get Over This BIG!
7. Kevin Owens
On the 27 August episode of Raw last year, a glum Kevin Owens, utterly fed up after once more failing to snatch Seth Rollins' Intercontinental Championship, hauled a steel chair into the middle of the ring, slumped his dejected frame down and proclaimed, "I quit!"
What drama! What a story! But also, what utter, utter tosh. Within the space of a week, KO was right as rain, talked back into the fold by Raw's negotiator-extraordinaire Baron Corbin (can you imagine Constable Corbin talking anyone into anything?). Owens, as he had been for so long since the end of his Universal Championship reign, was once more on the merry-go-round marked 'mediocrity', with WWE seemingly having absolutely no clue how to use a man supremely gifted both within and without the ring.
Were it not for AEW's tendrils reaching out for any disgruntled and potentially profitable talent up north, you wouldn't have bet against Owens leaving WWE this year. It's seemingly for that same reason his employers have finally made a virtue of the Montreal native.
Owens' arc since his injury comeback at the start of the year has not been perfect, granted, but it has allowed him to express his finest qualities, re-defining himself as a people's anti-hero opposite ready-made bête noir Shane McMahon. It's quite the turnaround from exit-door lingerer to one of the company's most popular babyfaces.