Let me be clear about something before we get into this: Kevin Owens in Toronto is not a television match. Kevin Owens in Toronto, in front of that crowd, with the Undisputed WWE Championship on the line, is a main event experience that most cities would murder for. Scotiabank Arena is going to be a furnace tonight. KO is going to walk out to a reception that makes every other city on the loop feel embarrassed. The roof will genuinely threaten to leave the building.
And WWE is burning it on a free TV championship match three weeks before Money in the Bank.
Here’s where I get off the bus. If Owens is your MITB challenger — and everything points that direction — you do not run this match tonight. You just don’t. Not because the crowd won’t eat it alive. They will. Not because Punk and Owens can’t deliver something worth watching. They absolutely can, and they will probably put together twenty minutes that trends worldwide. I know what these two are capable of in a ring together. I’ve seen it. You’ve seen it. That history is real.
The problem is what you’re spending before the pay window opens.
You’re telling me the creative team looked at a rabid Canadian crowd, looked at one of the most layered long-term rivalries on the roster, and decided the right call was a title match on basic cable — sorry, basic cable *and* Netflix — as a go-home appetizer? That’s not building toward the premium live event. That’s cannibalizing it.
The Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton chaos teaser is interesting, and I want to know where that’s going. The MFT’s defending against Priest and R-Truth is a fine midcard frame. Giulia versus Blake Monroe I’ll watch with my eyes open because Giulia doesn’t do bad matches. Fine. Good television on paper.
But the top of that card is a decision that tells you everything about how WWE views its own hottest acts right now. When you’ve got something running hot, your instinct should be to protect the temperature, not throw the whole pot on the burner because Toronto showed up loud.
Owens deserves better construction than this. So does the match itself.
The crowd in that building tonight will make it feel bigger than it is. That’s the danger. Everyone backstage will watch the reaction and convince themselves the booking was right.
It wasn’t. The crowd saved the booking, same as always.