Who Came Up With Kevin Owens’ WWE Parking Lot Attack On Cody Rhodes?
Kevin Owens has revealed whose idea it was to have him turn heel on Cody Rhodes without WWE cameras present.
At the October 2024 WWE PLE called Bad Blood, Cody Rhodes teamed up with his WrestleMania 39 & WrestleMania 40 opponent Roman Reigns to defeat Solo Sikoa & Jacob Fatu. That didn’t sell with one of Cody’s best friends, Kevin Owens.
Kevin Owens was so mad about it that he attacked Cody Rhodes in the parking lot after the show. Owens hated it because he was feuding with Roman Reigns and The Bloodline for four years. Since Cody was also feuding with Reigns in the past, Owens didn’t like that Cody would team up with Reigns.
What was unique about the Owens heel turn on Rhodes is that it happened after the match in the parking lot. Not only that, but WWE used fan camera footage to spread the word on social media and television.
In an interview with Insight’s Chris Van Vliet, Kevin Owens revealed that the fan footage attack came from WWE’s Chief Content Officer, Paul “Triple H” Levesque.
“It wasn’t me. That was Triple H. That was his idea. He felt confident in doing it that way. I was not sure. I’m like I don’t know, is there even going to be enough people there? It turns out he was completely right, there was and yeah, it’s just a different way of telling the stories and he’s got a different mentality than Vince had. It’s really interesting, and people really responded to it.”
Owens also spoke about turning on Randy Orton to set up their rivalry as well.
The same thing with Randy, the way I ended up ultimately turning on Randy it was on TV, but it was done differently. It was something that was released later as well, and you just kind of caught the tail end of it on TV, but then they did the security footage after.
Kevin Owens Likes How Triple H Tries Different Things
While talking about the creative process in WWE, Kevin Owens praised the way that Triple H does things creatively. Owens also criticized the booking methods of his former boss, WWE Chairman Vince McMahon, although he didn’t mention Vince by name.
“He (Triple H) wants to tell stories differently, and he’s willing to try stuff out and see what sticks and I think that makes the show way more interesting. It doesn’t mean it’s always gonna work, there might be sometimes it doesn’t land, but we’re trying different things and new things, and I think that’s so important in wrestling.
When it gets monotonous and repetitive, no matter how good the matches are and the promos are, if you feel like you’ve seen it before and it’s okay, I’ve seen it before once. If you see a rematch once or twice, great.
But there were times over I’d say, in 2008, 2009, and I was an avid fan. I would never miss any WWE shows, even when I was an independent wrestler traveling the world. But I started paying a lot less attention in 08/09 because I felt like this is literally the same thing every single week.
There were times where even when I was here, like 2016, 2017 I felt like we just did this two weeks ago and now we’re doing it again. To me, when it gets like that it’s just not the way we need to do things. I think we need different things. There’s new things. We need to try stuff, and it has to feel unpredictable and exciting.”
Unfortunately, Kevin Owens will not be wrestling Randy Orton at WrestleMania 41 due to a serious neck injury that will require surgery and likely lead to a lengthy absence.