Kevin Owens Rejected Plan To Work With Ex-WWE Champion
Kevin Owens put his foot down.
Through late 2020 and into 2021, Kevin Owens was at war with Roman Reigns and The Bloodline. The rivalry continued for several weeks and months, and saw Owens challenge Reigns for the Universal Championship at the 2021 Royal Rumble in a Last Man Standing Match.
However, the original plans for the show and that period were vastly different.
During an appearance on What Do You Wanna Talk About? with Cody Rhodes, Owens revealed that WWE pitched for Damian Priest to join his fight against The Bloodline. At the time, Priest was still in NXT, and his team with Owens would have been his main roster debut.
Furthermore, the pitch would have seen Priest challenge Reigns at the 2021 Royal Rumble.
Owens explained that he was “incensed” when the plan was laid out, and quickly refused, noting that it made little sense.
“I’m at television and they come and tell me ‘Well things are kind of changing now, you’re going to be introducing your new best friend to help you take on The Bloodline because of the numbers game’. And I’m like ‘Who is this guy?’
They’re like ‘Do you know Damian Priest from NXT?’ And I go ‘The guy who does the fake arrows?’ (WWE said) ‘Yes’. (Kevin responded) ‘Well I’ve got nothing against him but nobody will believe that we’re best friends’. ‘We could not be more opposite, and why?’ ‘It’s so random?’
Turns out somebody threw this idea out there and it stuck for five minutes until I said ‘No, I don’t wanna be friends with him on TV, maybe in real life but let’s start somewhere.’ And yeah it got killed, but he was gonna take my match.
It was gonna be him versus Roman Reigns at the Royal Rumble. I was incensed, I said ‘F**k no’. But for what it’s worth I didn’t derail his career, he debuted on the main roster like two weeks later or whatever.
For me it just comes down to if I think the audience would be insulted by it. Which I didn’t think the audience would be insulted by the concept of me and him being friends, but at that time NXT had already been around, people are aware of NXT enough to know that he’s been in NXT, I used to be in NXT, we’ve never had any sort of interaction… it would just be so random.
It was one thing if they had told me that you were gonna bring him in as our backup, just a guy that you saw in NXT that impressed you but no ‘he has to be your best friend’. Also I spent years television wise f**king screwing every friend I had, and not in the fun way. Backstabbing them, so why would I introduce this random best friend?”
Kevin Owens Set For Neck Surgery
During the same conversation, Kevin Owens confirmed that he’ll finally undergo surgery in mid-July. The star explained that the reason for the delay is that doctors wanted to see how well his spinal cord healed on its own before eventually going under the knife.
Owens said that while he hadn’t previously had any symptoms related to his neck injury, in recent days the pain and nerve problems with his arms and legs have been “brutal.”
Kevin Owens had been due to face Randy Orton at WrestleMania 41 before being forced to take a break from the ring. The star has previously admitted that he may never wrestle again, even after surgery.
H/t to Wrestle Talk