Kevin Owens

When Team Raw lost at WWE Survivor Series 2019, Seth Rollins chastised the roster until Kevin Owens promptly shut him up with a stunner.

It's been over three months since that incident and the two men are still at odds with each other.

The feud could have ended at several points since then, but WWE has kept it going with WrestleMania 36 seemingly the end goal.

By April 5, it will have been over four months of the rivalry. The company has to make sure this is all leading to something worth that investment or two top talents will have gone to waste.

If all WWE has in mind is a standard singles match in Tampa, Florida, it will be a major disappointment.

Here's how to ensure the Rollins-Owens program is not a letdown.

One Big, Long, Boring Road with No Turns

Proper long-term storytelling is a slow burn with interesting twists along the way. Unfortunately, this feud has been more about WWE dragging things out for the sake of waiting for The Show of Shows.

For the most part, each week is a loop of The Monday Night Messiah and his disciples versus Owens and his allies in random attacks or tag team matches.

Merely changing the combination of pairs in each bout doesn't deviate from the repetitive formula.

For all the grand conjecture Rollins presents, WWE hasn't expanded on this gimmick's potential. When he has gained followers such as AOP and Murphy, those moments have been rare glimpses of fun in an otherwise dull program.

WWE has to go in more interesting directions over these remaining weeks.

What is troubling is that the company may think a story is being told here that isn't actually translating.

This has not been a feud of The Monday Night Messiah avoiding all of Owens' attacks to the point where fans are waiting for the moment when KO can finally get his hands on Rollins.

The story started with a stunner. It can't just be a long, winding road of four months just to get back to that point again.

They haven't been kept apart. They've come to blows over and over in these brawls.

A standard match won't cut it. WWE will have to spice things up for WrestleMania.

What's the Hook?

Rollins said on this week's Raw that Owens can name the time, place and "even the stipulation" for their confrontation, which is the key element in making their WrestleMania match more interesting.

Without a gimmick, this will be a midcard match fans will quickly forget about by the end of the night.

However, Rollins and Owens are among the best performers WWE has today. The former universal champions can get the job done in the ring with any stipulation, but some may be better options than others.

Since this is a personal duel, it calls for more of a hardcore match than something like a 2-out-of-3 Falls technical showcase.

No Holds Barred, Extreme Rules or a Street Fight will be fine, but since we're getting a No Disqualification match at Elimination Chamber, WWE should add some flair to it.

That could be as simple as giving it a flashier moniker, such as when the JBL vs. Finlay bout at WrestleMania 24 felt a bit more important when titled the Belfast Brawl.

Just as this feud should tap more into The Monday Night Messiah character in the weeks before The Show of Shows, their match should play off the religious overtones of his character.

With that in mind, Hell in a Cell stands out. It allows WWE to promote it as the end of a feud with a cage that will keep everyone out of the mix, although fans will know the disciples could still get involved.

That branding stands out on a card as an important segment, rather than just something to fill up 15 minutes as a buffer between title matches.

If not that, WWE could reference the start of this feud.

The first member of Raw eliminated at Survivor Series was Owens while Rollins was the last to be taken out. After reminding fans of that, this feud could culminate in a Last Man Standing match.

Owens has to conquer Rollins, so if he were to beat him down to the point where he couldn't get up anymore, it would be a more symbolic victory than a scenario in which he won with a roll-up or count-out.

As long as this isn't promoted ahead of time as just a standard match and WWE lets these two perform to the best of their abilities, it should go over well. But if the company puts little effort into spicing it up, their WrestleMania moment is doomed.

Anthony Mango is the owner of the wrestling website Smark Out Moment and the host of the podcast show Smack Talk on YouTube, iTunes and Stitcher. You can follow him on Facebook and elsewhere for more.

WWE Superstar Samoa Joe reportedly suffered an injury during a commercial shoot last week and is currently not cleared to wrestle.

According to Ryan Satin of Pro Wrestling Sheet, the injury occurred when Joe took a table spot as part of a WWE commercial shoot. Joe reportedly hit his head, and Satin has been told by sources that The Samoan Submission Machine could miss "a considerable amount of time."

Joe has been fighting alongside Kevin Owens and The Viking Raiders in their rivalry with Seth Rollins, Murphy and AOP, but he did not appear on Monday's episode of Raw.

The 40-year-old has been plagued by injuries during his WWE tenure, which began in 2015 when he signed a deal to perform for NXT.

Joe, who got the call to the main roster in 2017, missed the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania in 2018 after suffering a foot injury that kept him out for more than three months. Last year, Joe suffered a broken thumb that caused him to miss nearly four months until his return in December.

During Joe's most recent absence from in-ring action, he did some work as a commentator on Raw, and his performances were well received. If Joe is set to miss a significant amount of time, perhaps he could go back to that role for the time being.

Joe has been a significant part of one of the biggest angles on Raw since his return, and his injury comes at an inopportune time with WrestleMania 36 in Tampa, Florida, just over a month away.

It isn't clear what WWE's plans were or are for Joe at WrestleMania, but given his alliance with Owens and issues with Rollins, he could be in line for a fairly big match on The Grandest Stage of Them All.

Depending on the severity of Joe's injury, WWE may have to explore other options, which would be a blow to the WrestleMania card and a tough pill for Joe to swallow, considering he has only one Mania match on his resume.

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The narrative on Seth Rollins has done a 180—fast.

And WWE, for all its faults, deserves the credit for at least acknowledging a mistake and fan reactions before turning things around in one of the best ways possible.

Rollins' standing with the fans needed saving. It's almost cringe-inducing to run through the list of faults that got WWE to the point of botching a top star in this manner.

Fans know where it started: WrestleMania 35, where Rollins opened the show and won a title on a low blow. From there, unending feuds with Baron Corbin, mixing in some awkward Becky Lynch tag scenarios and, finally, the fateful, booed-out-of-the-arena match at Hell in a Cell with Bray Wyatt's The Fiend.

The only thing that could save The Architect was a heel turn. Throwing him out there each night in "aw, shucks" good-guy mode, talking about his work rate and bringing up the name of whichever city he was in just wasn't going to cut it.

But it had to be the right heel turn.

Fans saw plenty of the scaredy-cat heel Rollins who got help from others back in the day after his betrayal of The Shield and consequent run with The Authority.

His run with AOP is a whole different animal and sheer brilliance.

This Rollins fancies himself a savior of sorts. The work-rate stuff and standing as a leader even in the face of fan backlash has seemed to drive him into a delusional state. The best bad guys in any medium think of themselves as doing the right thing  most of the time, being the good guys even if no one likes it at the time—they think history will smile on them in hindsight.

And so he has blazed a path of destruction through Raw since slowly morphing into this deranged leader. He's propped up an amazing tandem in Akam and Rezar in the process. He's given a reason to get Samoa Joe out from behind the announcer's table and back into the ring while forming a fun, albeit likely shaky, alliance with Kevin Owens. He's also looped in Buddy Murphy, which should produce amazing results.

Perhaps best of all, odd as it might sound, it keeps him out of the main event scene with the top titles. While it stinks WWE has again reverted to slapping a title on Brock Lesnar, meaning it's gone most of the time, injecting Rollins into the picture right now wouldn't do much in the way of good for anyone.

At the very least, the idea The Beast Incarnate could get eliminated in Sunday's Royal Rumble and set up a new feud is a good option WWE should want to utilize.

No, this Rollins isn't ready for a title run. His work with AOP and his angering the locker room while also gaining allies here and there could go on for a long time and make for must-see television.

While building up other stars and gaining the animosity of fans (the good kind, not the bad), Rollins will slowly work himself into a heel role that sees fans desperately want to see him lose. That's why he bullies or cheats his way into a title shot. By then, WWE ideally has a fun good-guy champion he can squabble with and the whole feud won't be met with a lukewarm, potentially disastrous reaction.

For now, though, Rollins' fun path is just more proof even WWE can't ignore a fan movement. It throws its hands over its ears and screams about not hearing fans at times, like arranging the silly Lesnar-Cain Velasquez feud or feeding Kofi Kingston to The Beast.

But everything requires a careful balance, and one of those righting forces is the role reversal for Rollins. It's a clear-cut response to fan reaction that it initially tried to ignore before an alteration. And given the world-class talent he is, he's made it even better than WWE could have possibly drawn it up in the first place.

Call it a testament to both WWE and Rollins. The former listened, and the latter is using the shift as a way to remind fans he's one of the best on the planet while propping up some deserving names alongside him.

WWE Raw runs through Kevin Owens.

Owens might not technically be WWE's top Superstar outright, but he's the guy the company turns to when it needs something done. He's a malleable character who can make fans hate him whenever necessary or draws enough sympathy to help him become one of the most over good guys this side of Daniel Bryan. 

In fact, there's probably a reason Owens and Bryan are on opposite programs and getting used in a way to help get the very top programs over. 

Owens does it all for WWE. He's locked up with Shane McMahon in prominent roles. He was the partner for Chris Jericho. When WWE needed to get a title program with Goldberg working right, KO was the guy. Title feuds with AJ Styles and Kofi Kingston? Check. Check. 

Owens isn't the guy, at least not the crowd-facing guy. But he's the guy. And now he's tasked with making the revamped Seth Rollins and his Authors of Pain cohorts work. 

So far, so good. 

Owens has played the fighting victim well in his spats with the trio so far, only recently getting help from Samoa Joe. That's a fun combo in itself, but odds are we'll see some more Owens-Rollins battles and tag matches as WWE tasks these Superstars with commanding the top of Raw while the main title remains absent. 

Of course, KO won't stay in this program forever. Rollins will eventually have to move on to other stuff, but this has done a great job of rehabbing him in the minds of fans. Without a guy like Owens to play off of, it just wouldn't work as well. 

But once Owens' work here is done—solidifying Rollins as a big bad—the sky is the limit, as they say. If WWE wants the mid-title scene to be rock solid, The Architect likely goes there. If WWE wants things to really get weird, sending off the very top talent to the main event title scene, maybe KO makes a big splash in the Royal Rumble. 

Either way, whatever Owens does is bound to be money, which is what WWE needs right now. Raw's top champion, Brock Lesnar, is missing in action. Rollins is as volatile as it gets with fans. Randy Orton and AJ Styles have top-card potential but aren't involved for now and up-and-coming guys like Aleister Black still need time. 

Whatever Owens does from here is critical to whether Raw ultimately looks like a success in 2020. Fans wouldn't complain about another title run, this one preferably without a part-timer coming in and stealing it. And man would it be fun to see him spar on the mic with Paul Heyman and get a shot at Lesnar in the ring. But his helping develop the next wave like Black wouldn't hurt, either. 

For WWE, it must be nice to have an asset like Owens. He was treated like a big deal ever since he debuted with the company on the main roster and it was telling at the time decision-makers had big plans for his special talent. Fast forward to now, that's more than been the case. 

It's a little early to perfectly see what WWE has planned throughout 2020 for a guy one could argue is underrated. But what is clear is that said plan will be in a featured spotlight and therefore critically important to the program taking place each Monday night. 

Rest assured Owens, unlike most others, will make whatever it is work—and fans will enjoy the ride. While WWE and others will tell fans there are bigger names, nobody is a bigger X-factor for the red brand than KO.