The Real Reason WWE Needs To Push Kevin Owens
Seth Rollins versus a returning heel Dean Ambrose wrote itself. Ambrose, already unhinged, unravelled entirely in his period of absence. All the while, the idea of the traitor masquerading as a hero gnawed at his insides. When he returns, he puts on a gas mask, tells everybody that they smell, and then claims his best friend’s leukaemia battle is punishment from God.
No, that’s a terrible idea. He returns, immediately beats the sh*t out of Seth Rollins with a steel chair, and then cuts several, searing promos in which he takes aim at the phoney hero.
This was just one example. WWE fans no longer trust the company to do much of anything. Cooling off Becky Lynch, making a geek of Seth Rollins, vanishing Asuka, wasting everybody’s time by promoting and then killing the Women’s Tag Team Titles: watching WWE is like reading a book you know d*mn well they f*cked up at the printers. The last two thirds of it are missing.
The Kevin Owens push isn’t just about Kevin Owens: WWE needs to follow through on it to restore faith in the brand outright.
The genesis of the push is key to this. WWE, again, acknowledged how unpopular the product was in Kevin Owens’ version of the Pipebomb. Owens raged against it, making several salient points—so salient that they were probably ill-advised—under the promise that he was going to change things. Think about how f*cked this is: WWE telling the audience how much WWE isn’t for them is an established storytelling trope.
And what if Owens doesn’t change anything? What’s left, other than a product, defined by how bad it is, no closer to change? Isn’t that precisely why so many disillusioned fans are walking away?
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