Paying for the disrespect
What Owens did this week on Raw was a classic heel move. He came in, disrespected Cena and did the unthinkable by stomping on the United States Championship. There is obviously a lot of heat on Owens after that and most of the fans would love to see him get beaten at Elimination Chamber, which is also the second possible ending.
Cena showed a lot of respect to the likes of Neville and Sami Zayn during his previous title defense but Owens is not going to get that. Even if Owens produces the fight of his life, he will not get a sign of respect from Cena because, and this would take away the heel momentum that Owens built up so far.
A loss would definitely hurt Owens and WWE should try to sugar coat this as much as they possibly could if they are going with this ending.
Playing it safe
To be frank, WWE is at a deadlock here. Cena still has a lot to contribute from his United States title reign and he could throw in a lot of open challenges for the months to come. Owens on the other hand should not suffer a clean loss at Elimination Chamber since it would simply destroy everything that he did at this week’s Raw.
Cena shouldn’t drop the title and Owens should not look weak. What WWE could do to escape the situation is by letting Cena win via disqualification. Owens could simply destroy Cena throughout the match and then get disqualified by the referee for being too rough.
This way, Owens would look pretty strong like he did on Raw and at the same time; Cena can hang on to his title. This ending however would only work if Owens is going to stay in NXT for some more months.