WWE: Kevin Owens being fired was the best (and worst) angle of the week

The fact that Kevin Owens was “fired” on WWE SmackDown Live might have been both a brilliant, and utterly terrible, booking decision.

WWE doesn’t often invoke a sense of dismay and excitement in a person. Well, at least not at the same time that is. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but be simultaneously thrilled and angered by Kevin Owens being fired on SmackDown Live this week.

Let’s get the nasty out of the way first. This is a storyline we’ve seen in the past from WWE. In fact, if you count when Owens just quit, we’ve seen this angle of Owens “leaving” WWE multiple times before. All of those occasions have been in the not-so-distant past as well.

Long story short, that’s not the best look for WWE. It zaps any remaining excitement or intrigue around this storyline, especially considering WWE could have easily justified having Owens side with Shane McMahon for that one match in order to help his family, and instead sends us down a fairly predictable path.

Kevin Owens will likely exit from TV for a bit, perhaps at some point trying to fight his way through security to get back to the show, before finally realizing that Shane McMahon is guilty of hitting a WWE official just as he was at SummerSlam. Somehow, this will lead to Owens’ blackmailing McMahon into reinstating him, if  he can beat McMahon at Hell in a Cell.

On the surface, I would argue that series of events would be a predictable and utterly unexciting way for this angle to unfold, yet would likely be a safe bet to actually happen. It follows the fairly standard formula for how WWE typically handles this whole “firing” gimmick, and is honestly just pretty easy to envision to boot.

That’s the problem though. We can’t take this story at face value anymore, because it seems like WWE is finally going to fully capitalize on the potential that this sort of angle gives them.

On Twitter, Kevin Owens posted a simple tweet that has led to rampant speculation that he will show up on NXT TV sooner rather than later.

As you can see, the numbers in KO’s tweet could very well be an allusion to the black and yellow brand everyone loves.

I don’t think it would be a reach to say that Kevin Owens returning for a quick run in NXT, just in time for their move to USA Network next week, would be brilliant.

There’s easily no less than a half-dozen superstars on the NXT roster that I would be dying to see Owens go one-on-one with in a WWE ring. The sky is basically the limit for how NXT could use Owens if he were to return to the brand.

He could side with Adam Cole and The Undisputed Era, given his history with Cole and all of those men outside of WWE. This could be the insurance that UE needs to ensure Roderick Strong captures the last belt necessary to make the team truly undisputed.

At the same time, Matt Riddle and Killian Dain are going to go to war in a street fight, which could lead to an accidental assault backstage that could easily end up invoking the ire of Owens.

That’s without even mentioning the fact that Johnny Gargano could probably use a solid rivalry right about now, or that there’s a boatload of talented individuals from the Breakout Tournament that could take a shot at the former Universal Champion.

All of those directions would be massively buzzworthy segments in their own right, and would ensure NXT remained one of the most talked about brands this month.

At the end of the day, that’s why this angle is so easy to root for, yet still so hard to love. Kevin Owens’ firing potentially opens the door for all these amazing angles, yet sort of ruins the one that he would inevitably have to return to the main roster to complete

All I can say for certain then is that I both can’t wait for, and can’t bear to imagine, what might lie ahead for Kevin Owens in the coming months.