Some places do power rankings. Here at Cageside, we do a stock report.
In this weekly series, we identify three Superstars (or groups of Superstars) who are on their way up, and three that are moving in the opposite direction. After a busy week that included WWE’s television return to Madison Square Garden, Charlotte Flair pinning Bayley in a Horsewoman tag team match, and Undertaker chokeslamming Sami Zayn, a lot of fortunes were changed.
With that in mind, let’s see whose stock has increased the most this week:
Stock Up #3: Erick Rowan
Rowan is headed to perhaps the biggest match of his career (aside from his loss to The Rock at WrestleMania 32, of course) against Roman Reigns at Clash of Champions on Sept. 15, and this week he upped the ante by tossing a fan at Roman and ramming a large camera rig into Roman’s body. Their pay-per-view match will have no disqualifications, so Rowan actually has a chance to win if Daniel Bryan or someone else gets involved.
Stock Up #2: Baron Corbin
Baron Corbin was mostly an afterthought around the time of SummerSlam, but now he is right back to being pushed as one of the top heels in WWE. His victory in a triple threat match on Raw this week (Sept. 9) over Ricochet and Samoa Joe earned him a spot in the finals of the King of the Ring tournament against Chad Gable.
Stock Up #1: Steve Austin
Steve Austin returned to Raw at Madison Square Garden and was instantly the biggest star in WWE once again. After moderating a contract signing between Seth Rollins and Braun Strowman, Austin went on to stun the hell out of AJ Styles and drink lots of beer with a group of babyfaces. The rest of the roster wishes they could be as over as Stone Cold.
Now let’s see whose stock has decreased the most this week:
Stock Down #3: The O.C.
AJ Styles the singles wrestler is a top guy who can eat a Stone Cold stunner and not be hurt by it. However, the OC is still trying to establish itself as a dominant heel stable on Monday nights, and these segments where they are humiliated by stars from 20 years ago (like D-Generation X and now Stone Cold Steve Austin) make it difficult to take them seriously as an elite faction that can overwhelm anybody in their path.
Stock Down #2: Andrade
Andrade was fed to Miz on SmackDown this week (Sept. 10) as Miz gets ready for an Intercontinental championship match at Clash of Champions. It’s not surprising to see Cesaro put Miz over in this role last week, considering that Cesaro has been beaten so many times over the years, but there’s really no excuse for using Andrade this way. Well there is one excuse, actually, and that’s if WWE doesn’t see Andrade as someone worth pushing.
Miz’s credibility as an upper card babyface was ruined months ago by Shane McMahon, and the match between him and Andrade wasn’t even good, so nothing positive came out of this one.
Stock Down #1: Kevin Owens
Kevin Owens was arguably the hottest babyface in WWE coming out of SummerSlam 2019. Here we are one month later and he doesn’t even rank among the top 10 in that regard. And of course Shane McMahon’s push is at the center of it. This is a story that probably should have ended at SummerSlam. Instead it was extended with Owens reluctantly doing the evil McMahon’s bidding, foolishly being deceived by McMahon anyway, and then getting fired for it.
Owens’ decisions as special guest referee this week didn’t make much sense. He willingly counted Shane’s shoulders down for a defeat in the first fall even though he knew that’s not what Shane wanted, but then throughout the rest of the match he tried to help Shane win. Then he got fired and beat up by Shane afterwards, which made him look even worse. At this point, maybe it really is for the best to just wrap this story up now and move KO on to something else, rather than continuing this feud for months and subjecting Owens to the same potential burials that the Miz had to deal with earlier this year at Shane’s hands.
There you have it, Cagesiders. Whose stock do you think has changed the most this week?