Will Shane McMahon Fight Kevin Owens at SummerSlam?

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WWE.com Kevin Owens and Shane McMahon.

With just a few weeks to go until SummerSlam, there are now rumors that Shane McMahon will be facing Kevin Owens in a match.

If you’ve been watching SmackDown Live in recent weeks, you can clearly see the build up to a Shane McMahon vs. Kevin Owens match. McMahon, after all, has been making a number of decisions on the past few episodes of SmackDown Live that have upset Owens, most notably booking a triple threat match for the United States Championship. During this match, Styles won the title back by pinning Chris Jericho, and Owens was outraged that he was forced to defend his championship in a triple threat and that he lost it without even being pinned. He also said that the only reason this match was booked at all was because Shane McMahon dislikes him.

Owens, in fact, has been directing his anger even more at Shane McMahon than he AJ Styles, fitting with the idea that it’s McMahon with whom he will have a feud. It’s pretty early to be building to WrestleMania 34, and so SummerSlam seems like the time to do this match. This is a sentiment Dave Meltzer expressed on a recent edition of Wrestling Observer Radio.

“If they’re gonna do it, I would think it would be their SummerSlam, because it’s a little early to be starting a push for WrestleMania,” Meltzer said. “Yeah, it looks like a possibility.”

Plus, Ringside News recently published a rumored SummerSlam card, and it includes a match between Shane McMahon and Kevin Owens.

We’ll likely get an answer to this question tonight on SmackDown Live. If AJ Styles retains the championship, it seems likely that Owens will begin a feud with Shane McMahon, blaming McMahon for his championship loss. But if Owens wins, the WWE probably has something else planned, and the Shane McMahon hatred could be more of a long term thing that leads to a match at WrestleMania 34. 

Shane McMahon’s last match in the WWE was against AJ Styles at WrestleMania 33. This Styles feud ocurred because Styles was upset about the way McMahon was running things. In particular, Styles became the number one contender for Bray Wyatt’s WWE Championship, but then Randy Orton changed his mind and said he wanted to reclaim his number one contender status. McMahon placed Styles and Orton in a number one contender’s match, which Orton won.

Styles was subsequently extremely angry at this decision of McMahon’s, and he couldn’t believe that he didn’t have a match at WrestleMania 33. This led to Styles attacking Shane McMahon backstage, and although Styles was initially fired, McMahon subsequently challenged him to a match at WrestleMania. This potential feud with Kevin Owens would be a similar storyline of a wrestler being upset with the commissioner’s decisions and wanting to take out his anger on him in the ring.

SummerSlam will take place on August 20th in Brooklyn, New York. It will feature a fatal four-way match between Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns, Braun Strowman and Samoa Joe for the Universal Championship. It will also feature a match between Jinder Mahal and either Shinsuke Nakamura or John Cena, depending on which one of the latter two wins a number one contender’s match tonight on SmackDown Live. 


UPDATE: On the August 1st episode of SmackDown Live, it was announced that Kevin Owens and AJ Styles will fight for the U.S. Championship at SummerSlam. However, Shane McMahon will serve as the referee. This means that the Shane McMahon vs. Kevin Owens feud is probably more of a long build, potentially concluding with a match at SummerSlam or Hell in a Cell.