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At Fastlane 2017, Kevin Owens saw his Universal Title reign come to a very sudden and shocking reign. The “longest reigning Universal Champion” lost his title after 188 days to a 50-year old part-timer. While it was a sudden end, it seemed fitting to the failure that was the entire reign in the last few months.
Kevin Owens arrived with such fanfare on the main roster. As the then current NXT champion, he surprised then US Champion John Cena in May of 2015. It was a shocking debut and the crowd loved it. His credibility grew in feuds with the likes of John Cena, Dolph Ziggler, Cesaro, Sami Zayn and Dean Ambrose. When he won Raw’s biggest title in August 2016 it seemed that WWE had finally gotten behind Owens. Alas, it was not meant to be.
With that in mind, here are five reasons why Kevin Owens’ WWE Universal Championship run was a failure:
#5 He lost his Prize Fighter gimmick
When Kevin Owens debuted and attacked John Cena it made a quick impact. Here was a heel that didn’t care what the fans thought and went after the biggest star in the company. His reasoning was simple: he was willing to fight everyone at any time to feed his family. When he backed it up with a win against John Cena at Elimination Chamber 2015, the prize fighter gimmick was validated.
A heel that can back up his words makes a compelling villain. Nothing is better than a cocky heel that can back it up. The Kevin Owens who was the Universal Champion was anything but that man. He was cowardly, whiny and was always running away from a fight. It was a far cry from his prize fighter days and was not a heel you could support.
#4 His title win was overshadowed by Triple H
When Bray Wyatt and AJ Styles won their first WWE titles on the Smackdown brand it was a big deal. They did it on a pay-per-view and they won it on their own. Sure, AJ Styles cheated a tad, but he didn’t need any outside help to win the top title on the blue brand. This was not the case for Kevin Owens.
On the August 29th Raw of last year, Kevin Owens was able to win his first Universal Title. It should have been a big moment but Triple H appeared to ruin things. He attacked Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins on his way to giving Kevin Owens the easy victory.
It took all the credibility out of the victory. It might have been fine if Kevin Owens formed some sort of alliance with Triple H, but Triple H simply vanished. How you win the title can set the stage for a title reign’s success and Owens got off to a rough start.
#3 He wasn’t a serious champion
I want to start by saying that I really enjoyed the friendship of Chris Jericho and Kevin Owens. They made a great comedic team who helped carry the Raw brand through some really brutal shows and months. However, it doesn’t exactly help you gain credibility when people are laughing at you.
Sure, you can harass Tom Phillips backstage for weeks on end but it doesn’t work out long-term. If you look at past WWE Champions like Edge, you will notice he didn’t have his biggest success until he gave up his silly tag team with Christian and became the “Rated R Superstar”.
He was a serious heel character. Kevin Owens got a huge reaction when he attacked his “best friend”, Chris Jericho. People wanted to see that from Owens but got a guy cracking jokes about friendship.
2. He couldn’t win a title match without outside interference
We all understand that bad guys cheat. That really is all that separates them from the faces in WWE. However, the most successful heels in the WWE are the ones who find a way to overcome the odds and win on their own. That was not Kevin Owens.
Kevin Owens won a grand total of zero title matches on his own. He had to have Chris Jericho’s help to win at Night of Champions, Hell in the Cell and Roadblock. He had help from Chris Jericho and Braun Strowman to win at the Royal Rumble.
He couldn’t even win a match on Raw against Seth Rollins without help. If your champion cannot win any matches on his own, it limits his impact when he actually loses the title.
#1 He lost the title in ridiculous fashion
Look I understand. Vince McMahon wanted to put the title on the 50-year-old part-timer to fight a 39-year-old part-timer in a pointless rematch for the title. That means the current champion had to lose to set the stage for that WrestleMania 33 match. However, did they have to do it in the way they did?
Kevin Owens wasted minutes playing the cowardly heel again. When he was finally ready to fight, he was quickly distracted by Jericho and lost his match in 22 seconds. It disappointed the fans again and made Kevin Owens look bad. But I guess that was a fitting end to a really sad Universal Title reign.
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