WWE Fastlane 2018: Why Kevin Owens Will Win The WWE Championship

For the past couple of months, the common complaint revolving around WWE SmackDown Live’s biggest storyline – the friendship between Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn and their rift with management – is that the stakes don’t feel high enough. At Fastlane 2018, those criticisms just might be washed away in the form of a shocking WWE Championship victory.

When Sami Zayn saved Kevin Owens from Shane McMahon at WWE Hell in a Cell 2017, fans knew something special was about to happen. Zayn and Owens have been the best of friends and the best of rivals for years, and their work together in 2016 produced some of WWE’s best matches that year.

As a heel, Zayn has been even better than expected, but this dream Zayn/Owens heel friendship has felt a little lackluster to some. Between overused matches, shoddy writing, and a seeming lack of a long-term plan, some members of the WWE Universe are skeptical about the final pay-off here.

Those concerns have only mounted in the wake of a recent rumor that Owens and Zayn may be relegated to the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal at WrestleMania, effectively downplaying a storyline that has been the focus of SmackDown’s main event scene ever since the turn occurred.

I wouldn’t put any stock in those rumblings. Clearly, the WWE has big plans for Owens and Zayn, because it would be utterly ridiculous for them to waste everything they’ve built between these two. If you watched the go-home show of SmackDown Live, how could you come to the conclusion that the WWE would simply ignore expanding upon the complex emotions that exist between Owens and Zayn?

Let’s briefly recap the events. Zayn told Owens that he would be willing to “lie down” for him at Fastlane, effectively handing his best friend the WWE Championship. AJ Styles’s WWE Championship is on the line at Fastlane in a six-pack challenge, with Owens, Zayn, Dolph Ziggler, Baron Corbin, and John Cena all competing for an opportunity to face 2018 Royal Rumble winner Shinsuke Nakamura at Fastlane.

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Later in the show, Ziggler and Styles were in the middle of another excellent match, but Zayn and Owens (surprise, surprise) interfered, beating both men up. Their issues with Styles are well-documented, and Ziggler has been recently deployed by Shane McMahon to make life more difficult for Owens and Zayn. So it would make sense for the two of them to exact revenge on Styles and Ziggler, especially since it may hurt their opponents’ chances at Fastlane.

Because of this interference, an impromptu Fatal Five-Way match was booked for the main event of the show. For the most part, it was a tightly-contested match with Styles breaking up big pinfall after big pinfall. But in the end, it came down to Owens and Zayn in the ring together alone with everyone else laid out on the outside.

Zayn saw his opportunity, and he took it. From out of nowhere, Zayn blasted Owens with a Helluva kick, pinning his best friend to the shock of everyone. After the show, Dasha Fuentes caught up with Owens to get his reaction. And for the first time in his WWE career, Owens was left speechless.

This was all part of the plan. We’ve seen in the past how the WWE has taken advantage of Zayn’s neurotic character, trying to meticulously draw up specific plans backstage with his teammates in tag matches. Zayn always has a plan. And so does KO, who has cooked up fake turns and other ruses with his old best friend Chris Jericho.

Yes, Zayn Helluva Kicking Owens was part of the plan, and, yes, I think the same scenario could play out at Fastlane.

Everyone in the ring is exhausted, beat up, and on the outside. Zayn and Owens are the last two left. And Zayn lies down for KO in the ultimate showing of loyalty for his best friend – a man he saved at Hell in a Cell and a man he practically worships.

The WWE Championship is the only major singles title that Owens has yet to win in WWE. He’s already been Universal Champion, Intercontinental Champion, and, thanks to his hot potato feud with Styles, a United States Champion several times over. Capturing the WWE Championship would be a big deal for Owens, and it would represent him finally climbing up to the top of SmackDown Live after all of his battles.

Everything involving Owens and Zayn has been SmackDown Live’s top story week after week. Last year, Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt were in a similar position before their WWE Championship clash at WrestleMania 33. So it stands to reason that Owens will eventually capture the brand’s biggest prize after chasing it for months.

But here’s what gives me pause. The WWE has turned off a large chunk of its fan base by booking an entirely predictable Universal Title match between Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar. And while that match could have Braun Strowman thrown in there, this isn’t likely. Furthermore, the fans have been expecting Shinsuke vs. Styles for quite some time, meaning that if the WWE were to pull the plug on this NJPW rematch at WrestleMania 34, the fans would be incredibly upset.

And here’s what causes me to press “play” again. Everything SmackDown Live has done since the “Superstar Shakeup” is deliberately mess with the fans in order to draw heat on a heel. Carmella used James Ellsworth to win the first ever Women’s Money in the Bank briefcase. Jinder Mahal was the WWE Champion and purposefully put on boring matches with Randy Orton and Shinsuke Nakamura before finally dropping the title. Nobody wanted Ellsworth to grab the briefcase. Nobody wanted Mahal to be champion and defeat Nakamura multiple times.

I could see them doing the same thing with Owens. Some fans fear that John Cena will win the WWE Championship and face Styles and Nakamura in a Triple Threat match at WrestleMania. After all, he outlined this himself. The problem with this logic is that Cena is a babyface, so this would be a match with three babyfaces. Though Cena would play the heel and get booed by the crowd, it’s too convoluted.

Owens is a heel, and he’s a heel fans will boo, even though they respect the hell out of him as an in-ring talent and promo. By having him win via dubious means and ruin a dream match between Nakamura and Styles, the WWE will have generated massive heat on Owens. Note that in the build to Owens’s feud with Shane McMahon, KO told Shane that his family would have been better off if he died in a helicopter crash that actually happened. He beat up Vince McMahon, who broke the “No blood, damn it!” rule just to make Owens’s beatdown “Look real, damn it!”. You know, to put Owens over as a sick monster.

The WWE knows how special Owens is, so I could see them swerving the fans by trying to give him a ridiculous amount of heat with a WWE Championship victory at Fastlane.

However, if Owens wins, that doesn’t necessarily mean Nakamura vs. Styles is off. If the WWE wants to get heat on Owens and have a WWE Championship “payoff” for him without potentially alienating the fans, they could have him drop the title back to Styles before WrestleMania. The story there would be that Styles is so upset with Owens and Zayn and so driven to have a match with Nakamura for the title that he invokes his rematch clause before ‘Mania – and wins the title back to rescue the dream match. Then, Owens and Zayn can have something to feud over, because Owens lost the title that Zayn won for him.

Where does Sami Zayn fit in all of this? He could join the Triple Threat match to make it a Fatal Four-Way, he could feud with Owens if KO drops the title before ‘Mania, or he could be saved for a major feud until after WrestleMania, potentially turning babyface again once he realizes that KO just used him for his own gain.

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Just remember this if you are hopeful for Nakamura vs. Styles. For as awesome as that match would be, when was the last time the WWE did a straight-up babyface vs. babyface singles match at WrestleMania for the WWE Championship? And when was the last time they redid a marquee title feud from another promotion? If the WWE has cold feet about doing any of this, then Owens represents a potential candidate to make it a Triple Threat.