Kevin Owens lost to Cody Rhodes at WWE Saturday Night's Main Event. A wrestling veteran explained his thoughts behind this loss while praising the match.
Jim Cornette is the latest to comment on the Cody Rhodes-Kevin Owens match at Saturday Night's Main Event. Owens got another chance to capture the Undisputed WWE Championship at SNME. The American Nightmare possibly wasn't 100 percent heading into the bout as he faced Chad Gable on SmackDown. During the match, Gable seemingly hurt Cody's leg with the ankle lock.
This ankle became the focal point of Owens' attacks during their bout. He targeted the leg and did everything in his power to win but was still unable to defeat The American Nightmare.
Speaking on his The Experience podcast, Jim Cornette praised the match, stating that nobody was expecting the title to change hands but since Owens kept working the legs of Cody, it gave him an out if he did lose. He also said that this was a page out of Dusty Rhodes' playbook. This work helped create some doubt and add interest to the match since fans didn't know if Cody Rhodes was going to overcome Owens.
"I don't know that anybody was expecting the title to change hands on this show. Even the devoted fans, whatever. Not that you want to see the heel beat Cody in theory and in psychology but a title change is a big deal and this is a page out of Dusty's book. Cody seemed to be the dominant guy from the way that they've been presented, so you give the dominant babyface a f***ing weakness that the heel can work on and, 'Oh my gosh,' and then the people start thinking, "Well, is this his out? Are they going to explain that he lost because of this?' And you're just creating a little doubt as the match goes on and as annoying as the f***ing fat son of a b**ch is, Owens can work when he wants to and they kept this thing going. This was like a '90s television show match on the RAW Monday night wars rather than the pace you see today and they were cooking." [3:24 - 4:41]
Bill Apter believes Kevin Owens didn't live up to the hype
Kevin Owens had a valid reason to be mad at Cody Rhodes since he believed The American Nightmare stabbed him in the back when he teamed with Roman Reigns at WWE Bad Blood. This was the entire basis of their feud and hence, it was expected that Owens would be aggressive against his former friend as soon as the bell rang. However, this was not the case and he started off the match slowly.
During a recent episode of Sportskeeda's The Wrestling Time Machine podcast hosted by Mac Davis, Bill Apter said that Owens didn't live up to the hype during the match and wasn't as exciting as he thought it would be.
"The hype that didn't live up to was, unfortunately, to me, was Kevin Owens. I was waiting for him to come out like a madman, and he didn't go crazy till after the match when he and Triple H got into it. So that was a little less exciting than I thought it would be." [4:22 onwards]
It will be interesting to see whether Kevin Owens will get another rematch for the title.