There is no doubt about it: even somewhat agreeing with Vince Russo is like agreeing with the anointed covering cherub. He helped drive WCW out of business, piling up 20 million dollars of debt in his short three-month tenure. He nearly drove TNA out of business with his inane car-crash style booking. The man caught lightning in a bottle once and rides off the coattails of coming up with the Attitude Era idea for decades, even though there were much smarter people around him that filtered his ideas. The man has been mostly a failure as a writer.
However, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then. Russo recently made more disparaging comments about Kevin Owens being the champion. Dissimilar to last time, though, his sentiments on were sort of right. He said that Owens does not look like a champion, though it is not entirely his fault. I would say Owens does not feel like a WWE champion more so, but Russo is still on the right track.
I mean, there is no doubt that Owens does not look like the typical WWE champion. He is not that big; he is overweight, and he wrestles in a t-shirt and gym shorts but that does not mean he cannot be champion. It just means that WWE has to hide his weaknesses by accentuating his strengths, similar to Daniel Bryan, Mick Foley, CM Punk, and so forth. Those wrestlers did not look like the prototypical champions, but there were reasons they did not feel out-of-place as champion.
Nobody did it better than Paul Heyman in ECW. His roster was filled with misfits, wrestlers that neither WCW nor WWF wanted due to a glaring weakness or many weaknesses they possessed, though he took those unwanted wrestlers and turned them into icons. For example, Taz was a very short man, and if booking poorly, he could have been a laughing-stock that nobody took seriously, but in ECW, he was booked correctly and became an untamed animal who could suplex the hell out of someone and then choke them out in a blink of an eye. Sandman was an out-of-shape man, at least for wrestling standards, who could not wrestle out of a paper bag. Whoever taught him how to wrestle should not be allowed to train anybody again, that is how bad he is at wrestling, but because of Heyman’s scrupulous booking, he was a beer-swilling, chain-smoking, and cane-whaling badass.
On the contrary, Kevin Owens is much more talented than Sandman, Taz, and most of ECW’s former wrestlers. He is a great talker and wrestler and can play a convincing ruthless ass-kicker, and his portrayal of an ass-kicker works both as a babyface and heel, too, as he can be an anti-hero who stands up to anybody or a strong-arm bully, yet he is less intimidating and credible than them as a consequence of how he is booked.
Owens does not feel like a WWE Champion because he is not booked like one. Accordingly, his bulging pot belly, average height, scruffy beard, and pasty skin become more transparent because of the way he is perceived. When he was a prizefighter, looking for the biggest dogs in the yard à la John Cena, he had distinguishing characteristics.
The juxtapositions between his appearance and ability worked effectually due to how bewildering it was seeing someone who did not look the part being a well-rounded wrestler who could out-wrestle, out-fly, and out-brawl almost anyone. He possessed a “don’t judge a book by its cover” aura to him, which naturally would make him a very likeable babyface if not for how big-headed, brash, discourteous, and tyrant he was and that made him very unlikable in a “we want to like you, but your attitude is so insufferable” type of way.
Even though he was battling John Cena for the US Championship, he was more over and defined as a character as he is now, the Raw Champion of WWE’s flagship show, which is a testament to what actually matters, and for a company that claims to be so about the wrestler making the title precious than vice-versa, the way they book Owens as Raw’s Champion goes against that vital rule. Now, despite being Raw’s champion, Owens is a directionless character with no identifiable fortes.
Triple H is the sole reason he became champion and both seemingly fluky occurrences and Chris Jericho is why he has remained champion. He barely wins on television to make matters worse. He feels like a paper and transitional champion holding the title for Roman Reigns and that is not the feeling WWE wants when the title switch occurs. It helps neither wrestler.
Triple H is the sole reason he became champion and both seemingly fluky occurrences and Chris Jericho is why he has remained champion. He barely wins on television to make matters worse. He feels like a paper and transitional champion holding the title for Roman Reigns and that is not the feeling WWE wants when the title switch occurs. It helps neither wrestler.
I understand why WWE wants to protect its top-tier babyfaces and that is why Owens has beaten them in fluky fashions, and also understand that Owens is champion because Fin Balor was injured, but that still does not negate the fact that WWE could have built up Owens better with the title around his shoulder. It confuses me why WWE refuses to feed Owens mid-carders who are not doing much of anything, so he can obtain more credibility by defeating them in a dominating fashion; and if Owens needs to cheat to win against the top babyfaces of Raw, he should at least be very good at cheating, like Edge was, instead of someone who gets fortunate from ‘deus ex machina’ occurrences.
As painful as it is to say, Russo is on the right track in what he is saying. It surely is hypocritical of him to say, seeing he put the title on himself and David Arquette, but because of the way Owens has been booked, he does not feel like a WWE Champion at all and therefore does not look like one either.
