#3 He wasn’t a serious champion
I want to start by saying that I really enjoyed the friendship of Chris Jericho and Kevin Owens. They made a great comedic team who helped carry the Raw brand through some really brutal shows and months. However, it doesn’t exactly help you gain credibility when people are laughing at you.
Female superstar says she inspired John Cena turning heel HERE
Sure, you can harass Tom Phillips backstage for weeks on end but it doesn’t work out long-term. If you look at past WWE Champions like Edge, you will notice he didn’t have his biggest success until he gave up his silly tag team with Christian and became the “Rated R Superstar”.
He was a serious heel character. Kevin Owens got a huge reaction when he attacked his “best friend”, Chris Jericho. People wanted to see that from Owens but got a guy cracking jokes about friendship.