It has come to light recently that Baron Corbin was WWE’s second choice to win the King of the Ring tournament. It’s not a big deal that my own personal pick Kevin Owens got booted, but it is telling that WWE’s original choice to win the tournament (and my second) was Drew McIntyre, and he was slated to be thrown into a program with Seth Rollins for the Universal Championship immediately after. This also tells the WWE universe that the creative team still has big plans for him in the future. He just had to have surgery at a rather unfortunate time (but we need him healthy for the road to WrestleMania).
Because of the unfortunate timing of this, don’t be surprised if WWE elects to do the KOTR tournament again next year and have McIntyre get the accolade. This would be reminiscent of when Triple H was positioned to win KOTR in 1996. Vince McMahon decided to give the accolade to Stone Cold Steve Austin instead because of the incident at Madison Square Garden.
The Kliq broke character to say their goodbyes to Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, who were leaving the company for WCW. Triple H would ultimately win it the next year in 1997. The rise of Corbin is a pretty good consolation prize though.