WWE Fastlane 2017: Can Kevin Owens Look Strong in Defeat to Goldberg?

Kevin Owens is set to defend the WWE Universal Championship against Goldberg at WWE Fastlane 2017. Unfortunately, it’s hard to imagine Owens looking strong in the match.

With only a matter of weeks before WrestleMania 33 in April, there is still a lot of talk about what could be the plan moving forward with the WWE Universal Championship. There are some who hope that Kevin Owens will defend that championship against his former best friend Chris Jericho.

It would certainly be a great match and will likely have a great storyline after Owens ruined the Festival of Friendship. But he’s going into Fastlane on March 5 in a championship match against Goldberg. The WWE has spent the last few months since his return to the WWE booking Goldberg to be a completely unstoppable monster.

It would be highly unlikely to see Kevin Owens get the upset victory in the final pay-per-view before WrestleMania. Not with how Goldberg has made extremely short work of Brock Lesnar; the other man who looked nearly unstoppable for the last five years. While the WWE has allowed some wrestlers to look formidable against Lesnar, the Beast Incarnate has always been the better, faster and stronger superstar.

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Goldberg walks into the WWE and he defeats Lesnar like a Level 70 Charizard destroys a Level 10 Pidgey in the older Pokemon video games. One would assume that the WWE would have thought of building up someone like Owens to be able to face someone like Goldberg. He’s held the WWE Universal Championship since late August.

However, Kevin Owens has been the beneficiary of outside interference for most of his reign as the WWE Universal Champion. Even when he won the title, it was after Triple H gave the assist.  It also doesn’t help that Owens would turn on Jericho only a few weeks before Fastlane. Maybe the turn and end of the best friendship in recent history could have waited until March 6.

Kevin Owens is surely more than capable of being able to have a good match with Goldberg. He’s been able to work five-star quality matches with a variety of WWE superstars – John Cena, Cesaro, Rusev and Roman Reigns to name a few. However, it would be hard to expect Owens to be able to look strong in a match with someone as strongly booked as Goldberg.

It’s not impossible for the WWE to make this match a longer bout. But with Goldberg being older and not having had a match go for more than a few minutes, it would be inconsistent booking to have Kevin Owens have a longer match. It’s the kind of match that hurts Owens whether he wins or loses.

He will likely lose in a squash similar to Goldberg destroying Lesnar at Survivor Series last November. If the WWE has Owens win, it would have to come from Lesnar interfering to cost his WrestleMania 33 opponent. But wouldn’t Lesnar want to win the WWE Universal Championship? If so, wouldn’t he want Goldberg to win at Fastlane?

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Either way you cut it, Fastlane is not the kind of event that will help Kevin Owens. Owens will either be a  lucky winner or, the most likely result, a squashed wrestler who did hold the WWE Universal Champion.