Tonight, Shane McMahon will be involved in another outing inside the squared circle. Ever since his return to the WWE, the creative team has used him in one-off matches for more significant occasions to sell out PPV tickets. This time, the opportunity is no more different. Even, at this age of 47, he will be the one to the main event the Hell in a Cell PPV and that too after not being a regular performer.
Before this stint, Shane-O-Mac used to involve in this type of one-off matches during his younger age. He made a career by doing some dare-devil stunts off some large structures which would have been a mark-out moment. At Wrestlemania 32, he might have pulled off the greatest stunts of all time in the WWE by jumping off the cell.
Even, tonight, we can certainly expect him to do the same and especially considering the match has been made a Falls Count Anywhere match. He would not dare to kill himself to win this match. This is an opportunity for him to seek redemption against Kevin Owens for what he did to his father, Vince McMahon.
Now, he Shane McMahon is also the commissioner of Smackdown Live. So, there’s a conflict of interest that he is the head of the blue brand whereas he also acts as a performer. Considering this, there might be some of the superstars who do not like him competing in one-off matches.
Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Newsletter discussed a potential backstage resentment due to the same reason. Despite being a part-timer, he features in the main event spotlight. As always, he steals the show by putting his body on the line. He gets the chance to do so since he knows that he will get enough time to heal up the wounds till the next time he performs. Check out Meltzer’s words, here,
“The one thing [Shane] has the advantage on, which is the [full-time] guys don’t have, and I remember guys used to be critical of this when Shane would do the big bumps. Because it was like ‘well, Shane’s gonna do one or two matches a year, and he’s gonna do this big bump, and he can get hurt and rest up. And he shows us all up that are trying to do big bumps, and we gotta come back the next day.’ So in a sense, there was resentment of him.”
Despite what anyone thinks, it’s certain that Shane McMahon will pull all the stops against Kevin Owens to put up a great show. After a long time, WWE came up with a great storyline to build up a match dependent on the personal rivalry. These two are probably going to deliver a ‘one-of-a-kind’ main event match.