Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached a grand day on the professional wrestling calendar, as the Royal Rumble is now upon us! Tonight, 30 men and 20 women will be entering for a chance at glory! The winners of the eponymous Rumble matches will join a rarefied air, as only the cream of the crop get their hand raised here. We only have so long now so let’s get to closing out this mini-series today! One of the top favorites is also arguably the top babyface on Raw right now: Kevin Owens!
Kevin Owens – Relevant Stats
- WWE Debut: 2015 (Debuted in NXT in 2014)
- First Rumble appearance: 2016
- He has never won a Rumble match.
- This will be his third Rumble appearance. (Includes Greatest Royal Rumble.)
- He has amassed one total elimination.
- He is a one-time WWE Universal Champion.
- Current betting odds: +900
How 2019 Went For Kevin Owens:
It was a pretty interesting year for Owens. It was the first one he’s spent in WWE as a babyface! In fact, the only other time he was ever face was literally his debut in NXT. For one lone match against CJ Parker, the man now known as Juice Robinson, he was a triumphant and fighting face. But he turned heel that very same night, betraying Sami Zayn and he’s been a fine villain ever since.
But at the start of 2019, we eased into a babyface turn. As he recovered from injury, we got updates from him showing him in videos as being but an average, relatable guy that happens to love fighting. He returned in February and quickly got himself involved in the WWE title situation, emerging as a challenger to Daniel Bryan. But as discussed in the Kofi Kingston part of this mini-series, that scene got pretty murky pretty fast. Owens went from looking like a likely Mania challenger to somehow missing WrestleMania entirely.
He did become one of Kofi’s first challengers after he won but failed to defeat him at Extreme Rules. This included basically pausing his babyface turn to align himself with his old friend Sami Zayn once again and that did not go well. They were pretty badly buried together, seemingly just to kill the act once and for all.
Once he finally got going with his face turn proper, the year picked up for Owens.
He swiftly found himself beating the hell of Dolph Ziggler, including a 17 second victory on PPV, and then he spent the summer feuding with Shane McMahon. This included defeating the bosses’ son at SummerSlam, and later winning a Loser Leaves WWE ladder match against him to send him packing. To date, we haven’t seen Shane return yet, so the win has stuck.
Generally speaking, you don’t feud with a McMahon unless they have big plans for you. And for Owens, the plan ended up being slotted as the top babyface of Raw. He moved to red brand in the WWE Draft. And before long he found himself embroiled in a feud with Seth Rollins, who turned heel at Owens’ expense. Save for a quick trip to NXT to partake in an excellent WarGames match – which his team ended up winning – he’s been combating Seth Rollins and his group of AOP and Buddy Murphy ever since, with the likes of Samoa Joe, Rey Mysterio and even the Big Show helping him out. We’re still waiting on a big blowoff match to all this, and may have to wait until Mania…
Where does that leave his chances?
Pretty good, I’d say. Even though they’ve yet to pull the trigger on it, it’s been clear to me for quite some time that the idea is to make Owens into a headliner again. He’s fallen off a fair bit ever since he lost the Universal title to Goldberg a few years ago. But he’s been positioned pretty well to retake the top spot as a babyface this time around. Winning the Royal Rumble would certainly cement him in the upper echelon.
What would his story be?
In theory, Kevin Owens could totally go after Brock Lesnar. The idea would be that he’d do what Rollins never could and slay the Beast once and for all. This easily lets Owens and Rollins conclude their feud at Elimination Chamber whilst simultaneously still building to Owens’ final showdown with Lesnar.
But what I think is actually more likely is the inverse of the scenario I presented in Rollins’ own Rumble preview. I brought up the idea that Rollins could win the Rumble, Owens could take the WWE title at the Chamber, and thus their final blowoff would be for all the marbles at Mania. But I think the opposite setup is actually much more likely. Owens wins the Rumble, Rollins takes the WWE title shortly thereafter and thus Owens challenges him at WrestleMania. It’d be a fitting way for things to conclude, I think.
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