[Opinion] Is a Kevin Owens PipeBomb Incident is Around The Corner?
There are some incidents that every person who watches wrestling now knows about, irrespective of the fact that whether they were into wrestling at that time or not.
Some such instances are the end of Undertaker's streak at WrestleMania 30, Undertaker vs Mick Foley (Hell in a Cell match), Daniel Bryan's Yes Movement, the Montreal Screwjob, the existence of wrestlers like Hulk Hogan, Rock, Shawn Micheals, etc.
Many fans weren't even born when Montreal Screwjob happened, but they still know about it in detail. This happens because these incidents are so famous that people even now talk about it every now and then. These are the incidents that people refer to when they talk about different eras of WWE. These are those such moments that has made WWE what it is today.
Another such incident happened in June 2011, which is popularly known as the Pipebomb incident.
This is engraved in the minds of the fans. It is one of those incidents that shook the whole management and questioned its way of running the business.
The Pipebomb incident was basically a promo by CM Punk which is scathing yet highly acclaimed on-air speech in which he blamed WWE of cheating and favouring selected wrestlers in their WWE roster.
He is regarded as the best wrestler in the world (no pun intended) in the history of WWE by many fans still. He made himself a household name, after the Pipebomb he dropped. There was not one thing that he said on that day which was not true and that made this more special. It was as if Punk was speaking on behalf of the WWE Universe.
After that incident, everyone was behind Punk to become the WWE champion at Money in the Bank 2011, which eventually happened. He was the most over wrestler at that moment and involving the management just commended him more.
Those 10 minutes changed the dynamics of the way fans look at WWE. This also proved advantageous for WWE as this increased the TV rating of the show by a huge margin as everyone was interested to witness the next chapter of this rivalry.
WWE needs another such incident now more than ever. The storylines are at its worst and the ratings clearly suggest that people are not buying their product. Last week's rating was an all-time low for Raw. This does not affect the management much due to their massive TV deals but it will show its consequences on the long-term. Before the pipebomb incident too, Raw was looking a bit dull and that promo acted like an oxygen cylinder to a consistently declining show. Vince can again make the fans excited to tune it to Raw every week with just another such incident.
They even have a suitable candidate for this now, Kevin Owens. \
They have been mostly using him to lose easily to other wrestlers to get them over. He is much more capable than that after all, he is the same man who beat John Cena cleanly.
He is basically in the CM Punk's position now before he dropped the pipebomb. He even "quit" the show because of the same reason and has issues with the management which he is not able to speak openly at the moment. He did come back the very next week to start the feud with Bobby Lashley but nothing has come of it yet, so for that we have to wait and see.
If he can create the same charm that CM Punk made with his pipebomb promo, he can again go back to be the strongest heel of the company that he is. He is obviously great with mike so undoubtedly he can do an as good job as Punk if not better.
Owens and WWE both need this. Right now, Kevin has nowhere else to go except up, so probably they should take this risk and try to create a similar magic.