The story arch between Shane McMahon and Kevin Owens has begun in April ever since Owens first joined SmackDown Live, and it will reach its conclusion tonight at WWE Hell in a Cell 2017.
Although Jinder Mahal will be defending his WWE Championship against Shinsuke Nakamura, it is telling that the actual main event of WWE Hell in a Cell 2017 is the match between Shane McMahon and Kevin Owens. It’s never been a secret that a “McMahon” will always take paramount importance in a storyline, but the build between Owens and Shane has been so good that this match is deserving of its main event status.
Owens is the WWE’s best “bad guy” right now, as the “Prizefighter” understands how to get under anybody’s skin while staying true to a vicious character that has been well-defined ever since his time with Ring of Honor. By attacking others, taking shortcuts, and commanding audiences with a wide range of savage insults, Owens consistently cements himself as a man who is equally respected and reviled.
Tonight’s match between Owens and McMahon will take place inside of the Hell in a Cell structure, and while Shane never beats actual wrestlers, there’s a strange undertone of a potential upset. While it would be a shock for Owens to lose, there’s a logic that if anyone can afford to take a loss to Shane, it’s Owens, who is a former Universal Champion, two-time Intercontinental Champion, and three-time United States Champion.
The Story So Far
When Owens first joined SmackDown Live, he immediately questioned whether or not the show is actually “The Land of Opportunity”, and his first appearance on Talking Smack made it clear that he intended to push things to another level. Owens insulted Renee Young and Shane McMahon at every chance, and his character had even more of a nastier edge to it than it did on Raw. After destroying Chris Jericho when he won the United States Championship back, Owens entered a feud with AJ Styles.
Both Styles and Owens traded wins back and forth with the title, but the big loss for Owens came at SummerSlam with Shane as the special guest referee. Owens took issue with the way Styles called the match, and the two continued to have issues on SmackDown Live. At one point, Owens picked another SmackDown miscreant, Baron Corbin, as his special guest referee in a match against Styles, but Shane deemed him an incompetent and biased referee. After losing so many matches, Owens eventually ran out of opportunities at the US Title, leading tensions between him and Shane to reach an all-time high.
Who can forget the big confrontation in which Owens told Shane that his family would have been better off if he passed away in a helicopter crash? Who can forget Owens head-butting Vince McMahon’s head open, hitting him with a superkick, and then crushing him with a frog splash? Who can forget Owens attempting to end Sami Zayn’s career before Shane heroically rushed out to stop the attack? Who can forget Owens throwing Shane all around the arena before crushing him with a pop-up powerbomb?
This feud has been built up perfectly, and if any match deserves to be inside of the cell, then surely it’s this one.
What To Watch For
The WWE does its best to avoid using blood in its matches, but Vince McMahon did bring out a blade job to sell for Owens on that fateful Las Vegas episode. There needs to be blood in order to sell the brutal impact of this guttural match, because both men are fighting for something important. Shane is in an especially important position, because the man is fighting for the honor of his family. Owens basically tried to kill his father, and the violence in this match needs to reflect the way it has been built.
No match will have more brutal spots than this one. Owens has always been willing to take hellacious bumps, no matter the promotion. Just last year, he was powerbombed through two tables by Seth Rollins, in what turned out to be an all-time classic Hell in a Cell match. Tonight’s encounter with Shane should have a few spots that top that one.
Prior to the match, Owens has said that he will throw Shane off the top of the cell so that Shane doesn’t have to jump, alluding to the daring move that the SmackDown Live commissioner pulled at WrestleMania 32 against the Undertaker. I doubt that happens, but there’s a reason why this match is a “Falls Count Anywhere” affair. Something crazy will indeed happen.
At WrestleMania 33, Shane pulled out a great actual wrestling match with AJ Styles, but that won’t be the case here. This will be a bump-fest that will have fans on the edge of their seats, and it will be a spectacle. That is more up Shane’s alley. And while Owens is a brilliant technical wrestler, he’s always been at his best in brawls, and you can refer to his Royal Rumble match with Roman Reigns as an example of this.
Final Prediction
The fallout from this match will be more important than the match itself, because while there’s an element of this being a “blow-off” match to a feud that has been built for months, there will be plenty of loose ends to tie up. There will also be plenty of questions to answer. Will Owens head back to Raw, and how would Stephanie McMahon react? Could Triple H get involved? If Triple H does get involved, whose side is he on? Will this lead to match at Survivor Series? Could Sami Zayn interfere in a “Falls Count Anywhere” match? If Zayn does interfere, who does he help?
While there’s a part of me that thinks Shane could actually win this match as a way of making his matches seem more important, it’s hard to see a non-wrestler defeating a wrestler, especially a wrestler as decorated as Owens. Shane loses all of his matches, so it makes it hard to take him seriously. And yet, the builds to all of his matches are excellent, and people actually do predict him to win despite his lousy win-loss record.
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The WWE has built Owens to another level of stardom ever since he was called up to the main roster. He’s beaten John Cena clean, he’s won the mid-card titles several times, Triple H gave him the Universal Title, and he only lost the Universal Title in an unclean manner to a guy who almost never loses (Goldberg). In kayfabe, Owens might be the toughest wrestler to beat in the company after Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns. Because of this, Owens will win this match, but it will be a tightly contested match worthy of its status on the card.