5 ways in which Kevin Owens could return to WWE
Kevin Owens has had quite an illustrious career in WWE so far, winning a variety of championships. He is a Tag Team Championship victory away from becoming a Grand Slam Champion. He made his NXT at the end of 2014, turning heel on his first night. Owens won the NXT Championship in two months, which might still stand as a record. That's how impressive he was. Fighting the typical WWE superstar look, the Prizefighter made his way to Raw around five months after he made his NXT debut. This was an astonishingly quick call-up, but a one that WWE nailed.
Owens, in his first main roster match, beat John Cena clean in a Champion vs Champion match. While he lost the remainder of the matches, a star was born. Kevin Owens would become a bonafide superstar and main eventer in the WWE. But somewhere between his weight and WWE's reluctance to book strong heel main eventers, Owens still hasn't made the leap. Sure, he did win the Universal Championship, but his entire reign was filled with dirty finishes. He did not win a single title match clean during that reign. Alongside Chris Jericho, he did some of the finest work of his career but after losing that title, he has gone back to the upper mid-card.
A wrestler as ridiculously talented as Owens should be a consistent main eventer but WWE could not sustain a push for him. His feud with Shane McMahon looked to turn a corner but it dragged out and got stale by December last year. Ever since being drafted to Raw, Owens has been a literal punching bag for Braun Strowman. Months of destruction and humiliation at the hands of the Monster culminated with the real-life Kevin Steen to be squashed by him at SummerSlam. On Monday, Owens answered Seth Rollins’ Intercontinental Championship Open Challenge and had a brilliant match. He then proceeded to quit WWE. This is an opportunity to rebuild a fractured character who could be used in countless ways to improve the show massively. Raw could really use Kevin Owens now, they better give him something good to work with.
Hopefully, Owens gets some well-earned rest and returns better than ever. With a mix of expectations and wishful thinking, here are five possible ways in which Kevin Owens could return to WWE.
#5 The exact same
This would be extremely underwhelming, as Kevin Owens has been booked like a complete fool in the past few months. After ending their conflict with the authority figures on Smackdown, Owens and Sami Zayn joined Raw during the Superstar Shakeup. They got decimated by Braun Strowman and Bobby Lashley in a tag team match at Backlash before Owens entered the Money in the Bank Ladder Match. During the match, Strowman threw him off a really tall ladder at the stage area through a table, thus beginning a summer of bullying. Be a Star, WWE.
Owens would be destroyed weekly by the Monster Among Men and even fell from the top of a steel cage at Extreme Rules. Even though that resulted in an Owens victory, he was constantly left broken. Two months of torment culminated in a match at SummerSlam for Strowman's Money in the Bank briefcase. Maybe there was an endgame for Owens after all. But no, he got squashed in around 90 seconds. The former Universal Champion had a better night this week on Raw when he answered Seth Rollins' Intercontinental Championship Open Challenge. Owens lost and quit on the spot.
Kevin Owens is currently damaged goods and this Raw was the first step in his recovery. If he ends up returning as the same coward who gets thrown around by bigger men and hides behind the Authority, then what is the point? It is high time for a change on Owens' part and hopefully, he does return as something different. However, this is WWE and more importantly, this is Raw. They will probably bring him back exactly the same and act like nothing happened. WWE has surprised us in the past with great booking though, this is one such instance that warrants a surprise of such kind.