What if Kevin Owens moves to SmackDown Live?

Kevin Owens is a former Universal, NXT, and United States Champion. The list of guys who can claim these accomplishments is incredibly short—in fact, it’s limited to just Owens and Seth Rollins. Despite not having the traditional WWE look or an especially flashy move set, he’s a tremendous talker and a skilled practitioner when it comes to performing in the ring.

And yet, since moving from SmackDown Live to Raw after WrestleMania this past spring, Owens has above all else felt under utilized.

Owens and Sami Zayn went from a featured heel tandem SmackDown to cannon fodder for the likes of Braun Strowman and Bobby Lashley on Raw. All the more so since Zayn went down to injury, Owens has come across as lost in the shuffle.

His credentials and obvious talent make him too special to ignore completely. Just the same, he keeps losing big matches, and the oddball booking choice for him to quit and then show up the very next week seem to underscore that Raw doesn’t know what to do with him.

So what if Kevin Owens goes back to SmackDown Live? This article looks at five potential outcomes.

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5. A program with Daniel Bryan

A proper feud between Kevin Owens and Daniel Bryan could be good news for both men.

Kevin Owens spent his last half-year on SmackDown feuding with commissioner Shane McMahon in an issue that went from a war of words to a Hell in a Cell Match to a WrestleMania tag team showdown.

The last leg of that journey saw Daniel Bryan go from conflicted bystander to McMahon’s tag team partner and an enemy to KO.

Owens and Bryan never had a proper one on one match in WWE, in part because Bryan was officially retired for most of Owens’s tenure, leading up to his comeback match at ‘Mania. If Owens were to be positioned back on the same brand as Bryan, it could feel both fresh to engage with this singles program, while also being logical enough given the history between these two men.

Best of all, given the talents involved, the matches and promos involved would be most likely prove superb.

4. The first man to win the WWE Championship after the Universal title

Kevin Owens could make some world title history.

The Universal Championship has only been around for a little over two years now, but the list of champions is an impressive club, including not Owens, Finn Balor, Goldberg, Brock Lesnar, and Roman Reigns.

Excluding Balor (who only officially held the title for one night, and was injured before he could defend it) everyone on the list had previously won other world titles. As a matter of order, though Owens could become the first man to win the Universal Championship first, and then another in WWE.

And Owens' chances of winning another world title and being featured in a main event spot would multiply if he were to go back to the blue brand. Whereas giants like Reigns, Lesnar, and Braun Strowman have dominated the Universal Championship picture this year, with Bobby Lashley waiting in the wings, guys like AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, and Shinsuke Nakamura are in the title picture on SmackDown Live.

Owens fits that scene far better and has deceptively high number of first-time main roster dream matches awaiting him there.

3. Avoiding Shane McMahon

Kevin Owens vs. Shane McMahon is about the last feud WWE needs to revisit.

There are a number fresh, interesting matchups awaiting Kevin Owens if he were to make the jump back to SmackDown. One program that no one is clamoring for, however, would be a renewal of Owens vs. Shane McMahon.

To be fair, the 2017-2018 feud between the two was largely good, with an interesting take on the old authority figure vs. wrestler angle in reverse face and heel alignments from what we ordinarily see.

Moreover, both are game performers who assembled some worthwhile ring work together. However, their issue extended for so long that there’s absolutely no interest in seeing them square off again.

To be fair, McMahon has been mostly absent of late, in favor of Paige running SmackDown Live solo, so we might avoid rekindling this feud by default. In any event, it’s not a piece of WWE history worth revisiting, or at least not worth revisiting this soon.

2. A face turn

Kevin Owens could find a totally new direction as a face.

In his three years on the main roster, Kevin Owens has been featured on both Raw and SmackDown, and as both a main eventer and a mid-card act. He has worked about as comprehensive and diverse a slate of opponents of anyone who has been around for a similar tenure, and the next logical step for him may well be to experiment with a face run.

Paul Heyman has famously commented in interview that Owens’s greatest potential may lie in becoming an everyman face, akin to this generation’s Dusty Rhodes. A turn on Raw would come with a big glass ceiling, as Owens is still unlikely to eclipse The Shield or Bobby Lashley anytime soon.

A face run among the current SmackDown roster, however, could conceivably see him shoot all the way to the top and a respectable run as the WWE Champion, or at least as a contender.

1. Sami Zayn follows

It's hard to imagine Kevin Owens in WWE for long without Sami Zayn nearby.

One of the great inevitabilities of Kevin Owens’s WWE tenure seems to be that wherever he goes, whatever he does, Sami Zayn will be there. This dynamic started in NXT, where Owens debuted with the context of being Zayn’s best friend from the indies.

It blossomed into an NXT rivalry that spilled over onto Raw. From there, both men got drafted to SmackDown and eventually wound up as heel partners in crime. After getting their comeuppance from Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan, the two wound up on Raw together.

Whether it’s to continue to their heel alliance, or to feud—with either one of these men turning face—the odds are if KO moves to the blue brand Sami Zayn ultimately will, too. The most interesting permutation on this scenario may well be if Zayn plays the heel to Owens as a face this time around, each seemingly out of his more natural role, but experimenting with this new twist on their long story that tends to produce excellent matches.