So, its been a few months now and having done two back to back clean jobs to the faces of WWE and NXT, it seems pretty clear that The Kevin Owens Experiment of ’15 is quite clearly finished and Owens has officially joined the echelon of Mid-Card Guys, where does his rank on the list of most disappointingly squandered pushes?
I mean, as you said, there really hadn’t been a comparable monster push done like it in the modern era (outside of Khali) and Owens was incrementally taking on greater visibility and TV time and was knocking it out of the park every single time. For me, he had that very rare "I have to see what this guy does next!" aura to him that I hadn’t felt since the Summer of Punk (and during some of Lesnar’s finer moments over the past few years).
I know I should’ve absolutely known better and never got my hopes up but the thing that felt different this time was that WWE pushed him to the moon of THEIR OWN ACCORD! That’s what really stung! They were giving us something awesome before anyone ever had a chance to even clamor for it! And yeah of course we all know the business-related reasons behind Cena getting his win(s) back but were there not a thousand better ways for Cena to get his heat back without Owens being completely cooled down and de-powered over the weeks to come to the point where he’s wrestling, of all people, CESARO at Summerslam with the narrative of the match being "Owens has been on a losing run, he really needs this win!"?
So anyway,
*Where does this rank on the list of biggest squandered pushes?
*What are your predictions for Owens’ potential for stardom from here forward?
*Was Monster Heel Kevin Owens continuing to tear through the WWE roster like tinfoil and rampaging through the show like Austin just a beautiful pipe dream that was clearly never meant to last and we were all too blind to realize it or was there ever a realistic possibility of his megapush actually following through somewhere and allowing him to become a new and major star?
That’s all well and good, but my question is why the hell they had to take the NXT title off him before Brooklyn if they weren’t planning to give him the US title? That’s the one that really baffles me.
At any rate, clearly the Owens mega-push was a pipe dream from the start, sadly. He could have been something akin to Steve Austin in 96, but now he’s just Sheamus. Better luck with the next prospect, I guess.