WWE: NXT on USA needs to be The Kevin Owens Show

Kevin Owens appears to have been fired from WWE per orders from Shane McMahon. Or was he merely fired from SmackDown Live?

Last Tuesday, Chad Gable was set to face Elias in the semifinals of the WWE King of the Ring tournament. Unfortunately, because of a legitimate injury he has suffered, The Living Truth was pulled from the match and replaced by Shane McMahon. To ensure a victory, Shane enlisted sworn rival Kevin Owens as the special referee, threatening his job in the process. That plan backfired when Owens ended up raising Gable’s hand at the end of the match (twice, actually).

Out of frustration, Shane O Mac fired everyone’s favorite Canadian. It appears that KO is out of WWE, but then again, Shane never did clarify exactly where he was firing Owens from. He just said Owens was fired. Shane could just be firing Owens from SmackDown Live, which would open him up to jump to another brand. Coincidentally, NXT happens to be debuting live on USA Network this upcoming Wednesday night.

KO’s firing being used as a reason for a brand switch isn’t totally out of the realm of possibility. In fact, we’ve seen it happen in WWE before.

Matt Hardy lost a Loser Leaves Raw Ladder Match to Edge in 2005, then popped up on SmackDown shortly after. A year later, Kane lost a Loser Leaves Raw match to Umaga right before heading to the blue brand himself. There’s a precedent that we have come to expect from angles like the one Kevin Owens is in right now. And again, with NXT going live eight days after KO’s firing, the timing could not be more apropos.

Even further, Kevin Owens teased this happening over in a cryptic tweet referring to where the letter N-X-T fall on the alphabet. He could just be trolling and hyping up unmitigated rumors, but he also could be setting up some clever foreshadowing.

Beyond just the possibilities of it all, Kevin Owens returning to NXT could actually benefit the brand in more ways than one.

Now that the black and gold brand will be a televised program, there are expectations for it to be viewed at and booked on equal footing as Raw and SmackDown Live. So much so that even Johnny Gargano, who for quite some time has been viewed as the face of NXT, declared over Twitter that “[NXT is] the main roster now.” Those are some big shoes to fill and given how the show has been viewed as a developmental brand for rookies for so long, they won’t be easy to fill. It especially won’t be an easy sell to new viewers less familiar with the brand.

Placing a former Universal Champion on its debut episode – in shades similar to Lex Luger debuting for WCW on its premiere Nitro episode – could do wonders to immediately establish NXT as a brand worth taking seriously and a show worth investing in the same way as a casual fan would for Raw or SmackDown.

I’ll even go a step further by saying he’d make an immediate impact by challenging Adam Cole – a man who KO has plenty of pre-WWE history with – for his NXT Championship. Then again, I might just be saying that out of a personal desire to see this feud happen on a WWE stage.

In any case, a rechristened NXT being molded around Kevin Owens early on could benefit NXT in several ways. It gives new fans a familiar face to tune in for, as well as establish the show into a similar vain as WWE’s longer tenured main roster shows. Plus, Kevin Owens being on NXT could benefit the talent on and offscreen.

Offscreen by having him work as a sort of pseudo-coach giving younger, lesser experienced talent advice on how to succeed in WWE. Onscreen giving that same talent experienced with working the complicated WWE style of wrestling by doing so with a veteran. Furthermore, anyone who beats Kevin Owens on NXT immediately looks like a million bucks and a prime candidate for a promotion to a Raw or SmackDown roster, especially if that “anyone” is the NXT Champion himself.

Of course, when KO is done with NXT, WWE can find any kind of storyline loophole to bring Kevin Owens back to the blue brand. But for now at least, in its blossoming hours, the black and gold brand needs to be The Kevin Owens Show.