Part 5 and conclusion of the Road to R-Evolution: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 On November 25, 2019, almost five years after his WWE debut, Kevin Owens cut a promo on Seth Rollins where he summarized his bedrock continuity across the years: “I have known who I am since the moment I first laced up a pair of wrestling boots, twenty years ago!” he said, looking into the camera–not just at Rollins, but at…
Category: Kevin and Generico History
Part 4 of the Road to R-Evolution: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Kevin uploads a new episode of his Weekend Escapades web series on January 1, 2014, covering the end of one year and the beginning of the next. It features the usual shenanigans: Kevin blearily explaining his next few shows in the pre-dawn dimness, filming Colt Cabana taking a shower, wandering around Chicago in the dark, admiring the Christmas lights of Muncie Indiana. Near…
(Part 2 of a series putting together Sami and Kevin’s timelines in 2013-2014: Part 1 is here). Putting together the beginnings of Kevin and El Generico’s story is like assembling a crazy quilt: scraps of cloth in a dozen different colors and shapes that sometimes don’t fit together quite right anymore because some of the pieces have gone missing. So many snippets and loose ends, such a challenge to piece them together. 2013-2014 are a…
It’s February 2013, 2:12 AM, and Kevin Steen is sitting in front of a red curtain and a sign with red block letters taped to it spelling out “The Kevin Steen Show.” A Kane mask, pilfered from the Highspots warehouse, perches on the sign and glares down at him. On one side of Kevin is a wrestler who goes by Cheeseburger, who is kind of supposed to be Kevin’s co-host, but who will spend most…
(Note: You click on any of the art to see a full-size version, and you can click on the link in the caption to go to the artist’s page!) He grew up an orphan on the mean streets of Tijuana. He learned his fighting skills protecting other children from bullies and thugs. He fled Mexico after he injured a man with a brainbuster gone wrong. We don’t know these facts about El Generico’s life from…
Wrestling exists in a constant state of tension between dependence and independence, with storylines that are constantly playing out that anxiety, running through the options over and over. When is it wise to rely on others and when is it smart to walk away on your own? Seth Rollins betrays his brothers to achieve the pinnacle of success, but later admits the victory is hollow. Even worse, there’s the nagging suspicion he only traded in…
Telling a story in wrestling is basically like writing a play. Except that each scene is performed in front of a different audience, days or weeks or months apart. And you only get to do each scene once—there are no second takes. And there are no understudies, each role must be played by one and only one person; you can’t say “Oh, Sami sprained his knee, so this week the role of Sami Zayn will…
Wrestling is palimpsestic, which is a fantastic and utterly useless word to know. In ancient Greece and Rome, a palimpsest was a wax tablet that people wrote on over and over, smoothing the wax to erase the writing before. However, the marks of the previous writings would remain slightly visible, persisting beneath the new writing like a ghost or an echo. Now it gets used in literary theory to describe texts where previous versions–that can…
Anything you can do, I can do better I can do anything better than you In 2012, El Generico loses, and loses, and loses. He loses key matches in Ring of Honor against Kevin Steen, unable to halt his nemesis’ rise to the top, and then unable to unseat him. He loses or vacates at least four different titles in the U.S. and Japan and Germany. By the end of the year he holds not…
After their big blowoff match at Final Battle, Kevin and El Generico limp out of 2010 and into 2011 to find themselves on different paths for a while again. Generico works in Ring of Honor, but also works for Pro Wrestling Guerrilla (PWG) in California, tours Europe, has a couple of dark matches for TNA, and goes on four different tours of Japan to work for DDT Pro, an offbeat promotion where he eventually crosses…