Welcome to another eWrestlingNews Question of the Day!

As unfortunately announced on SmackDown, Kevin Owens will be forced to undergo neck surgery and has been pulled from the WrestleMania 41 card. He will no longer face Randy Orton in their scheduled match.

Obviously, everyone at EWN is pulling for good news with regards to Owens’ health and safety, and wish him a speedy and full recovery that will hopefully see him step back in the ring and as soon as possible.

With that in mind, WWE does have the other added problem to solve of what to do with Randy Orton at WrestleMania, now that his match has been cancelled.

My question for you today is “If you were WWE Creative, what would you come up with as a backup plan with just two weeks left to build it?”

Remember to answer with your response in the comments below.

As far as my answer…

At this point, your options are limited. However, I think WWE already did the most interesting thing possible when they had Orton give Nick Aldis an RKO out of spite for saying he doesn’t have a match at WrestleMania.

The story can be simple: Orton said that Owens got him to start hearing the voices in his head again, and those voices weren’t pleased at that news, so they immediately took it out on Aldis. Whoopsie. But Aldis can say that’s not cool, and as a result, HE could face Orton at WrestleMania. It’d be nice to see Aldis actually get to have a match, and to have it be a debut at WrestleMania of all places would be a nice positive spin on a terrible situation and the most interesting match I can imagine with the limited options.

I don’t want to see Solo Sikoa in this match, randomly fighting with Orton again. We’ve seen it enough and it would mean microwaving a frozen dish just to try to reheat it. I also don’t think there’s room at this point to insert Orton into another feud like Drew McIntyre vs. Damian Priest, LA Knight vs. Jacob Fatu, or Cody Rhodes vs. John Cena, etc.

It’s too early for Rey Fenix, but if WWE wanted to do that, I would suggest Orton having an open challenge heading into WrestleMania, just so you can avoid needing to make a quick storyline out of it. That would just answer the question immediately.

But I think two more options that are certainly worth entertaining are for either there to be an open challenge or for Aldis to announce that he’s found someone to fight Orton on his behalf, with the eventual opponent for Orton either being Aleister Black or Rusev.

Supposedly, Rusev re-signed a WWE contract. If he’s ready to go, that would get a big pop and be a good means for him to return. And then, there’s Aleister Black, who has been teased for his return and previously had a gimmick where he was begging people to pick a fight with him.

Both matches would piggyback off the “surprise” return freshness to offset the lack of a build, and would spin this unfortunate Owens/Orton change into something that feels like a worthwhile replacement.

What do you think? Drop your thoughts below!