Owens And Jericho Break Up

Chris Jericho and Kevin Owens have been partners for a few months. Their partnership included both winning some titles. They have had their ups and downs. Friction has been teased. Overall, there were a lot of good segments and most fans will call this a successful partnership. I wish the storyline between Chris Jericho and AJ Styles lasted this well. Anyway, it looks like it is over now. Owens turned on Jericho on Raw this week.

Did it need to happen now? I am not raising the question because I worshiped this partnership like some fans did. Just in terms of storylines, did it need to happen now? Kevin Owens has Goldberg as the next challenger for the Universal Championship. Shouldn't the WWE be trying to really put over that feud? After Owens loses to Goldberg, he can turn on Jericho the next night on Raw. Jericho was the one that put him in the position to face Goldberg. The two could then feud for the United States Championship for Wrestlemania. The way the WWE handled it, this could be viewed as a bit of a distraction.

Let me bring up another "distraction" so you can see what I mean. Go back a few months to when Seth Rollins was feuding with Kevin Owens for the Universal Championship. This was coming off of Rollins looking so heated off of Triple H screwing him. Pretty soon, that emotion just died. I will never forget Rollins goofing around with Jericho's list. It just ruined his character. Not all faces need to be pandering for laughs. And I have seen many fans say that The List of Jericho was burying Owens. It was more over than Owens. It just became a distraction. Yes, fans loved it, but it was one of the reasons the development of certain things back then got hurt. There were other factors, like the WWE just not pushing guys right, but it was part of the problem.

Of course, you probably need a distraction right now. You have a feud involving a part-timer, and those people tend to not be used every week to help further whatever they are involved in. What is Kevin Owens supposed to do? Just beat up Gillberg? They could have continued to tease the issues between Owens and Jericho, but just not pull the trigger on the break up yet. You now have more people interested in that this week than the actual feud between Owens and Goldberg. It is just not smooth feud development. It wasn't that necessary to have the betrayal happen now.

You also have Triple H involved in this. He is in the ear of Kevin Owens. There you see another part of the problem. With Seth Rollins injured for at least a few weeks, Triple H has nothing to really do. They have to come up with something for him. And this is what they decided to do. I still think they could have waited. But I will admit the WWE is in a tough spot with what happened to Seth Rollins.

Proper feud development matters. That is why I spent yesterday talking about Smackdown's women's feuds. You have a feud between Nikki Bella and Natalya that just needs to end already. You have a feud between Becky Lynch and Mickie James that could have been booked to be a lot better than it is. You have Alexa Bliss losing the title when it looked like they could have built her to be a great heel character. You have them rushing the title onto Naomi when they could have built up to it better. The wider audience are not going to tune in for a match just because it is stealing the show. As far as matches go, people will tune in based on how well it has been hyped and the development of the feud/storyline leading up to the match. The feud between Goldberg and Owens has not had great development. It is getting buried by the distraction of Owens turning on Jericho. The WWE is just going to run on the hype of Goldberg + Title Match = $$$. Okay, but it seems like Goldberg has already lost some of his luster in terms of drawing in viewers. Let's see what he does in terms of selling tickets and getting WWE Network subscriptions.