Welcome to another eWrestlingNews Question of the Day!
After 2 years of being completely M.I.A. following being drafted to the Raw brand, Odyssey Jones finally started to appear on WWE television, only to be fired a few weeks later due to domestic violence allegations. Whether those stories were corroborated remains unknown, but WWE must have felt where there was smoke, there was fire—enough to release him, regardless.
While he was far from the most important person on the roster, he was still involved in a storyline with The New Day and The Final Testament, and seemingly poised to be a progressively bigger name going forward. We can only assume WWE had tentative plans to continue to push him toward stardom, in whatever fashion that was going to play out.
My question for you today is “What should WWE do to pivot now that Odyssey Jones is gone?”
Remember to answer with your response in the comments below.
As far as my answer…
In the grand scheme of things, we’ve seen plenty WWE Superstars in a similar position of being brought onto the main roster, quickly fizzling out, and the company moving on as if they were never part of it. Sadly, that’s happened far too many times, in different ways. So the true answer to this is that WWE will simply pretend none of that ever happened, for the most part, and do something else, after a few weeks of figuring out a new direction to take everyone else.
That applies to everything else they had planned. If it was all going to build to Jones against Bronson Reed in some clash of the titans thing, then that just simply won’t happen. That sucks, as Jones was showing some skill, and I was interested to see where his career would go, but given the circumstances, good riddance. I’ll sacrifice a potentially interesting storyline and performer’s showcase if said performer is guilty of terrible acts. And maybe this is going to be an even better thing for Reed, as there won’t be the temptation to make him look weak in comparison to Jones at any point.
I do think there’s probably still something more to teasing a split between Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods, though, even if Jones can’t be in the middle of it. Maybe Woods can even point out to Kingston how they can’t just recruit anyone without both of them vetting the guy first, and that can further the story of mistrust and the lack of leadership. I don’t know if the endgame here was a Big E return, but if that’s at all possible, I’d love to see Woods and Kingston continue to struggle and stop trusting each other fully until Big E comes back to unify them once more and put them back into the title scene.
If that’s not the climax of this story, then I don’t think I care to see it continue in any fashion. Final Testament lost the battle. New Day haven’t split up and won’t. We can just assume that and have a quick backstage segment where Woods and Kingston casually mention how they’re back on the same page and we’re moving on to put them opposite some other team, like maybe how I keep pitching Gallus should move up to the main roster and join Drew McIntyre as his lackeys, or The New Day can start fighting with The Creed Brothers. To be perfectly honest, the Raw roster’s tag team division feels very stale to me right now, so I’m not sure any storyline would particularly wow me, and I’d be more than down for moving them to SmackDown in a trade in exchange for maybe #DIY or Baron Corbin and Apollo Crews so they can feud with Tama Tonga and Tonga Loa. That would probably be the strategy I’d take.
As far as what I’d do with the missing gap of Jones playing a part in future stories, it depends on what they had planned for him, but we really only need to get through WrestleMania and another draft right after will fix any holes in that roster. I can’t imagine Jones was factored so heavily into those future ideas that his absence will be felt. There are so many other people to focus on that if they REALLY needed to bring someone else in to be a big guy, I’d go ahead and pitch bringing up Josh Briggs or Oba Femi to fill in the void—but I just don’t think it is necessary.
The only other thing to move on from this is to hold another meeting where they tell everyone that they need to really watch what they’re doing and avoid being in these situations. Not only will it kill their career, but it makes WWE look bad, so it’s not like other releases where maybe they’ll be rehired in the future. Who is going to want to hire Jones after this kind of story? It’s way past time talent smartened up and stopped thinking the rules don’t apply to them. If it’s not already an available service, WWE should offer counseling and anger management help in a similar way to the rehab facilities to anyone who is willing to put it out there that they’re getting anywhere near this type of behavior, so they can stop it before anyone gets hurt. We need to stop having these stories happen across the board, not just in wrestling, but at least within the WWE Universe, maybe there are steps that can be taken to really drive home the point to talent that this is NOT okay and that there’s potential for help before you screw up your career.
What a complete idiot, throwing away his job like that by being the type of terrible person to do these things. If you can’t be a decent human being out of sheer kindness and compassion, you can at least stop yourself from doing it for your own selfish needs. I guess he couldn’t, and within a few years, Jones will just be a random footnote of a talent that no one remembers, when he had shown some potential that maybe, if he had played his cards right, he could have been something.
What do you think? Drop your thoughts below!
