Well it looks the WWE has decided who will be the next opponent for the Big Dog going into the TLC pay per view on December. 20th, and although previous rumours were hinting at Daniel Bryan being the man to step up to Roman Reigns it looks as if they will be heading in a different direction for the time being.
On Smackdown this week while Reigns was busy berating his cousin, Jey Uso when Kevin Owens made his presence known by stepping in between the two men and laying into Reigns. He called Reigns out for preaching about the family while treating Jey Uso like garbage. This prompted the Big Dog to push his cousin into a match against Owens where Owens would end up winning by disqualification when Jey used a steel chair on the man from Canada. Owens quickly got the upper hand however and proceeded to do a bit of chair smashing on Jey Uso himself. It was a good back and forth match between the two superstars but was used as a tool to set up the eventual encounter for Reigns and Owens.
After Owens had finished administering his steel chair endorsed beating of Uso he looked right into the camera and asked Reigns if he got a close look at what had just happened. Reigns of course was watching backstage with a less than impressed look on his face.
The beef between the two men continued onto Twitter as well with Owens changing his location to “head of the table” in a great jab at the Universal Champion, while Roman responded on his account warning Owens that he now has the champs full attention.
Owens also gained the attention of Roman’s advocate, Paul Heyman, on the latest episode of Talking Smack. I won’t go into too much detail about the encounter but it is an absolute a much watch for any fan of either of these men. The intensity is shown by both Heyman and Owens during their back, and forth is going to go a long way to making people tune into seeing what will happen next.
So it looks like the WWE will be going with Kevin Owens as the next challenger for Roman Reigns Universal Championship, more than likely at the next pay per view, TLC.
Kevin Owens is one of the best talkers and ring workers in the company today and he has not been given a ton of direction over on the blue brand so it is great to see them putting him into a program opposing the Universal Champion. While there is probably zero chance that he will be taking the title away from Reigns it will at the very least be an entertaining story to carry us into the holiday season.
It will be interesting to see how this program unfolds in the coming weeks leading to the TLC pay per view but there is plenty of material to work with as there is a plethora of history between the two men. Over the years Reigns and Owens have gone to battle over both the Universal and United States championships and most of those matches were fantastic so it will be a safe bet that we should see the same again this time around.
Since the pay per view coming up is TLC I am wondering which match they are going to go with between the two. There is a good amount of back story there so a gimmick match should be something that is considered. Now in the match on Smackdown, we did see both Jey Uso and Kevin Owens use a steel chair on each other so the WWE could go simple with chairs match but outside of the Big Show using a massive steel chair years ago, there has never been a good chairs match. What would be nice to see is a ladder match or the namesake of the pay per view itself. Either way, when the TLC pay per view comes around on December 20th, we should be given quite a show in the Universal Championship match.