Why Kevin Owens Becoming A Ref On SmackDown Live Was A Great Idea

Shane McMahon really threw a monkey wrench in Kevin Owen’s plans to regain the United States Championship on SmackDown Live a couple weeks ago. He had picked his favorite referee in Baron Corbin and had faith the outcome would be in his favor.

However, Shane McMahon didn’t like the way Baron was counting so eventually The Lone Wolf said “screw it” and gave Shane his referee shirt. McMahon eventually counted a pinfall for AJ Styles which means Owens can’t challenge for the US Title again as long as AJ Styles is the champion. Don’t you just love that stipulation?

The next week on SmackDown Live Kevin Owens did pretty much the same thing except he just took the ref’s shirt off him and put it on. KO made a very quick count after hitting a pop-up powerbomb on Sami Zayn and Aiden English’s rarely heard entrance music played. It was weird, operatic, and after hearing it we understand why he sings his own entrances.

“This all made sense though I gotta say,” Dave Meltzer said on Wrestling Observer Radio. “Shane McMahon overruled [the match’s decision]. So the deal is because he overruled it, Kevin Owens is gonna say this is a contradiction because he just did what Shane McMahon did.”

“Shane McMahon was never the referee [in the US Title Match], he just put the shirt on and refereed and counted to three and that counted and held up and [Owens didn’t] get a US Championship.”

“I think the idea is to prove that in fact, Shane had no right to do that because he wasn’t a referee and it’s a double-standard. [Owens] is trying to expose this double-standard. I had no problem with it.”

“But in the end, I thought this was really good storytelling,” Meltzer concluded. This story development exposed the flaw why Kevin Owens deserves a US Championship match because the referee of the match never counted to three because Shane McMahon just took over.

There might be some repercussions story-wise for KO after pulling a stunt like that. After all, Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan can’t encourage wrestlers to just barge into a match and take the ref’s shirt to replace the official. That would be madness. But we’ll just have to see how Kevin’s rebellion against authority will escalate.

Of course, Owens won’t be wrestling Daniel Bryan if this results in a match because that would be madness too. But Shane McMahon is still cleared to compete.

The signs might be starting to point toward Hell In A Cell for a Shane McMahon return to the ring. If they booked Shane-O-Mac vs KO in a Hell In A Cell match it would be pretty epic and give Shane something to fall off of, that’s for sure. It’s not like he hasn’t taken a bump off the cell before. Except for this time maybe WWE could hide the crash pads a little better.

Then again with a violent genius like Kevin Owens in the match, who knows that they could come up with to punish each other?

If you use any of the quotes in this article please credit Wrestling Observer Radio with a H/T to Still Real To Us for the transcription.