La coupe du Monde: Wrestling Wrap Up: Kevin Owens Just Became a Megastar

Vince takes a headbutt from hell, Miz makes a major announcement, Asuka heads to RAW, the Mae Young Classic crowns a winner, and more.

By Matt Fowler

Greetings, Wrap Up readers. I hope you're having a good da...OH MY GOD WHAT THE...

Man, what a clunk. A sickening thud, if you will.

I know there are arguments both for and against the new worked-shoot style that WWE's adopted very quickly over the past few weeks - all starting with Roman and Cena's first in-ring segment and then bleeding over into the K.O./Shane-O feud and then even, this week on RAW, taking over the entire Enzo/Miz segment.

Some love the "reality" element of it all (hell, something about the Reality Era should be real, right?) while others would rather things remain kayfabe-only and not stray to far over into real beef territory. I see the detractors side, surely, because it can be a slippery slope. Worked-shoots can ooze and become real shoots and then wrestling becomes just an awful chore to watch because it's no longer wrestling it's just some hodgepodge of damaged egos and very little self-control.

But Kevin Owens full-on bashing Vince in the head, and busting the 72-year-old clean open, was a hell of a thing. What a grand moment. Granted, this wasn't the same type of thing as Cena and Roman's weekly snap fight or Miz calling out Enzo for being a giant pain in everyone's ass, or even the same thing as Kevin and Shane's segment from last week, but it was brutal enough to feel legit and it instantly took the Kevin Owens/Shane feud to a new level - turning it all into a Kevin Owens/McMahon Family feud.

And yes, by doing so, it presented Shane with a real opportunity to win a singles match. A Hell in a Cell match, no less. For redemptive purposes.

It does make you wonder though what Vince is planning right now for WrestleMania, what with Cena vs. Roman going down in a few weeks at No Mercy and Kevin Owens vs. Shane happening at the PPV right after that. These are big feuds. The ending to this week's SmackDown, featuring the obliteration of Vince, felt like a "Road to WrestleMania" arc. Kevin Owens is already a top guy, but this angle is going to shoot him to the freakin' moon. He's never crossed paths with the McMahons in a meaningful way, in all of his time in WWE so far, except for Hunter helping him win the Universal title last year, so this almost feels like two awesome worlds colliding. Two worlds capable of creating amazing segments and moments.

Sure, K.O. had issues with Shane, but Shane, as we saw with AJ, is capable of having a feud with someone and keeping the rest of his family out of it. I don't think many of us, most of us, saw Kevin's attack on Vince coming, even though the handshake between them seemed to come a bit early (there were still a few minutes left). I think many fans, and I'm including myself here, just thought SmackDown would end with the announcement about the HIAC match. But good for WWE, and freakin' crazy-ass "ram your head into my head has hard as you can" Vince, for kicking off a really hot storyline worthy of a Hell in a Cell match. Though, it was sort of reverse engineered. Like...the match was announced and THEN Owens crossed the line.

Once Stephanie came out at the end too, things felt even more major for Owens. This all feels really big. Again there's this big drive now to make the "down months" feel important and so far September is making up for most of last Spring. I understand that some fans don't like hearing Roman talk about "selling more tickets than John" or when things get too inside-baseball because it makes things feel less personal and, ultimately, can diminish someone's interest in a match, but for someone like me, who sees very little redeeming qualities in Roman, it's refreshing to hear him just be a flat-out dick. Because at least that's him being something.

Also, I feel like the perfect comeback to Roman's "WWE doesn't need you anymore, John" would have been "True. But WWE doesn't need either of us." Of course, WWE needs a main star, a handful of them in fact, but the company is so big now, and the roster is split in such a way, that none of WWE fully rests on the back of anyone. Everyone's a cog. Or, in the very least, Cena could have said "One day they won't need you anymore either." He could have even done it in an Abe Simpson voice so he could keep the "Big Joke John" vibe going.

By the way, and this feels relevant, I don't care if being an a-hole is you being you. I say this as I glare right into Enzo's shifty eyes. In wrestling, wouldn't anyone rather deal with a carbon-copy who might be putting on an act (why is being different from your gimmick a bad thing?) than an exhausting dipwad who wants respect because he's an exhausting dipwad 24/7 and not just when the cameras are rolling? Why is being "original" a compliment if you're just a ball of annoying nonsense?

Real quick now, that Miz/Enzo segment was great. Firstly, because it seems like it was just a one-time thing. They both needed something to do. Enzo needed to be on RAW even though he's a 205 guy now and Miz needed a foil for his Mizbaby announcement (side quest: dawwwwwww!). So what we got was the perfect guy to tell Enzo what's what, given his own backstory, putting Enzo in his place and Enzo basically saying "I don't care" and shuffling around like the crooked pigeon he is.

So this was the second segment this week, counting the Vince/K.O. shenanigans, where the heel was the babyface and the babyface was just a psycho troll. Miz brought up everything, from the wasted potential of Enzo and Cass to Enzo being kicked off tour busses to...just everything. All the backstage heat rumors that make their way to wrassle sites now tend to also wind up on TV weeks later. Maybe because these guys do so many interviews and podcasts where they're just flat out asked to talk about rumors the decision got made to just have it "warts and all" be a part of RAW and SmackDown.