Kevin Owens – A Heel Turn For The Ages

Hello wrestling fans.

Looking at the title of this article you’re probably thinking, “But Nick, Kevin Owens has been a heel since he joined WWE.” While technically true, Owens has always been received as one of those new-age cool heels that audiences cheer. He cheats, he trash talks, he’s a bully, but no matter what he does, he still gets cheered. It’s the reason I was never fully on the Kevin Owens bandwagon. Sure he’s always delivered in the ring, but he did nothing that made me want to cheer him as a hero, and he never clicked with me as a full-fledged heel either. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I honestly thought he wasn’t a very well-rounded performer as a member of the WWE roster.

His performances always came across as if he was trying to get a laugh out of the audience, instead of getting them to hate him. His trash-talking in the ring was always loud and obnoxious, but it was also always funny. His banter back and forth between other wrestlers was always brash and in-your-face, but that too was always funny. He became the definition of a mid-card comedy heel, even during his reign as WWE Universal Champion.

That was until this week’s Monday Night Raw. When Kevin Owens sat in the middle of that ring in a dimmed arena with a single spotlight on him and delivered what I consider his best promo since joining the WWE, I finally bought in. He was finally a villain. There weren’t any jokes, there weren’t any pandering witty lines. It was just business, and as a viewer, you could feel it. I might be a prisoner of the moment, but this may very well go down as Owens’ pipebomb. His Austin 3:16.

And it was all setup so well. We all knew the Owens/Jericho breakup was coming, but we didn’t necessarily know when it was coming, and we definitely didn’t think it would come during the “Festival of Friendship.” The entire segment was brilliantly done, and it setup Owens’ follow-up promo as a true villain so well. The best part about it was that he didn’t even mention the breakup or his actions. His friendship with Jericho was such an afterthought, it was so low on his list of priorities, that he didn’t even think to address it. An eight-month long relationship was beneath him. That’s evil.

And this evil new vibe continued throughout the night. When Mick Foley confronted him backstage, Owens wasn’t his usual sarcastic, hysterical self. He was calm, cool, and collected. He came across as a man on a mission to prove himself, a man with a renewed perspective. He will get ahead on his own, and he doesn’t care who he leaves in his dust.

This is the Kevin Owens I learned to love in Ring of Honor. This is the Kevin Owens I thought we would get in WWE. We got glimpses of it here and there when he first debuted in NXT against Sami Zayn, and then again when he joined the main roster and had his stellar feud with John Cena, but for the most part, we’ve been treated to this washed down version of something potentially great.

If there is something I’m upset about here is that this true villain of professional wrestling is coming as his WWE Universal Championship reign is seemingly coming to an end. Think if we had this version of Kevin Owens while he was feuding with Roman Reigns. Instead of cheering Owens as the heel and booing Reigns as the babyface, we might have actually gotten the opposite response. Instead of re-enforcing how much the audience hates Reigns by shining a light on it against a then fan-favorite in Owens, a larger portion of the audience might have actually wanted to see Reigns stick it to Owens. At the end of the day, isn’t that the main idea?

Remember back in 2010 when the Nexus debuted by destroying not only John Cena, but the entire ring and ringside area? It was a shocking moment, it was expertly executed, and it remains one of the best segments of the last decade. Now, remember how horrible the rest of that episode of Monday Night Raw was? It was the “Viewer’s Choice” edition of Raw and was riddled with ridiculous skits, over-the-top “comedy,” and it just dragged on and on. However, when followed by that main event closing angle, it made said angle all the more awesome because it felt real. It felt visceral amongst all the ridiculousness that came before.

Looking back, I’m getting the same kind of feeling from the entire Chris Jericho/Kevin Owens saga. Their entire friendship was so ridiculous, over-the-top, and fun that it made the eventual turn so jarring. The sudden switch in tone, from light and funny to serious and dark, really had an effect on me as a viewer and ultimately, helped finally cement Kevin Owens as the heel we all knew he could be.

Superheroes may not exist, but villains certainly do.