Over the last several weeks on WWE TV, we’ve slowly seen Kevin Owens lose his mind. Going back to WWE’s Bad Blood PLE in early October, Owens has gone off the deep end due to his lack of trust in anyone around him at this time. He saw the man he spent the better part of 6 months fighting alongside, Cody Rhodes, agree to team with Roman Reigns, the man they battled against both together and individually for the last several years. He saw Randy Orton try to keep the peace, making KO think that Orton took Rhodes’ side and not his. On top of all of this, he now has to be stewing over what he just saw on Smackdown this past Friday. Is he right to react the way he has, or, is this karma for everything Owens has done for the last decade of his WWE career?
Starting with the Cody Rhodes situation, Owens attacked Rhodes after Bad Blood went off the air due to Rhodes teaming with Roman Reigns on that night. Owens has been battling with Roman Reigns and his Bloodline since the end of 2020, and relentlessly battled Reigns, the Uso’s, and Solo Sikoa during that time. If anyone was synonymous with feuding with Reigns during his 1,316 days atop WWE, it was KO. He battled Reigns at multiple Royal Rumble events, tried on at least 4 or 5 occasions to take the WWE Title from Reigns, and suffered many emotional and physical beatdowns at the hands of Reigns. Then, when Cody Rhodes finally vanquished Reigns, Owens was one of the first men down the ramp to celebrate with him. After Solo Sikoa took over the Bloodline, Owens sacrificed his body time and time again to help Cody fend off Sikoa’s team and help preserve Cody’s title reign. Owens couldn’t stand to see Rhodes align with Reigns in Atlanta that night, even if it was for one night and even if it was strictly business against Solo Sikoa. He was justified in many ways for doing what he did that night and has done since, but is there more to it than that?
Before we get there, how about what’s been happening with Randy Orton? Orton was the 3rd party in much of Rhodes and Owens’ fighting side-by-side since Wrestlemania 40. He was in the trenches and he too sacrificed himself to handle Sikoa’s Bloodline. Like Owens and Rhodes too, he has a long-standing issue with Roman Reigns that goes back several years – Reigns orchestrating the attack that injured Orton’s back in 2022, putting him on the shelf, and they have battled since Orton returned as well. Orton has a long past with both Owens and Rhodes as well, but more so Cody. We all know the story: Cody was one of Randy’s proteges in Legacy nearly 15 years ago, and that has not been forgotten since Cody returned to WWE nearly 3 years ago. Meanwhile, Owens and Orton formed a bond and started a friendship/partnership earlier this year during their issues with A-Town Down Under and Logan Paul. That has since continued through their issues with Sikoa’s Bloodline as well, but when Orton didn’t immediately take Owens’ side following his attack on Cody at Bad Blood, Owens felt betrayed by Orton as well. This could just be a circumstance of Owens not trusting anyone, but now they cannot keep their hands off of one another, and just this past Friday, Owens hit Orton with a piledriver that sent Randy to the hospital. It’s clear that this issue is now personal, even if Randy didn’t technically take Cody’s side and was just trying to keep the peace.
With all of that said, there’s a piece to this that needs to also be examined: karma. Some may believe in it, and others might not, but here it seems like a real possibility. For all of Owens’ WWE tenure until the last year and a half or so, he was known as a man who quite literally could never be trusted. He turned on every ally he had, some in quite violent ways. Owens destroyed Sami Zayn on the night he debuted in the WWE in 2014, the night Zayn finally won the NXT Title after trying so hard for so long to do so. He then broke Chris Jericho’s heart during the Festival of Friendship in 2017. He also stabbed the New Day in the back after they made him an honorary member in 2019. Case in point: Owens has never had an alliance he didn’t ruin by his own greed and decisions. So, when he and Sami Zayn won the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Titles at Wrestlemania 39 and didn’t subsequently turn on him, it was a shock in a good way. Then, after they were drafted to separate shows, Owens maintained his good standing with Orton until this whole ordeal. As much as Owens was trying to restore his credibility and ability to be trusted as an ally and partner, has too much negative happened by his own hand to ever undo it all? It seems that the walls have come crashing in around Owens, and rather than realize it could be his own fault, he’s choosing to blame it all on the bad choices of others. In the end, Owens will one day have to look in the mirror and realize all of these negative scenarios may be the universe paying him back for all of the people he’s wronged over the years.
I think the biggest thing left unseen yet, mainly due to its recency, is what happened this past Friday on Smackdown. On that show, we saw the full-fledged reunion of the OG Bloodline: Roman Reigns, Jey Uso, Jimmy Uso…and Sami Zayn. Sami reunited with the man who made his life a living hell following his exit from the Bloodline nearly 2 years ago, and despite it being to mainly fight a common foe (as was the case in Cody Rhodes), this one might be the worst one yet for Owens. Sami Zayn is Kevin’s best friend in this entire world, they have been through it all together, and their long-fractured friendship finally mended what seemed for good when Zayn broke away from the Bloodline in January 2023, and he and Owens united to win the tag titles, as mentioned earlier. Will Zayn’s reunion with Reigns, and soon-to-be partnership with Roman inside of War Games at Survivor Series, be the nail that officially breaks Owens’ mind, sending him into mass hysteria? We saw him attack Cody Rhodes, an acquaintance, for teaming with Reigns. We saw him piledrive Randy Orton, his tag team partner, for siding with Cody following that. What in the world will Owens do when he comes to terms with what Sami Zayn has done, his best friend in the entire world reuniting with the one person Owens cannot stand more than anyone? One thing is for sure: if I’m Sami Zayn, I’m not only watching my back for Solo Sikoa’s Bloodline, but I’m also watching it for Kevin Owens as well!
