Kevin Owens Reveals How WWE Let Him Use The Package Piledriver
The Package Piledriver that Kevin Owens has used multiple times is something he wanted to do much earlier in his WWE career.
Kevin Owens turned heel on Cody Rhodes in October 2024 because he was upset with Cody for teaming up with Roman Reigns at Bad Blood. Owens was mad about it because Reigns and Owens battled many times over the previous four years, yet Cody was willing to team with the Tribal Chief.
After turning on Cody, Owens also turned on his good friend Randy Orton. That turn by Owens eventually led to Owens hitting Orton with a devastating Package Piledriver on Orton. Owens would go on to hit the Package Piledriver on Cody Rhodes and Sami Zayn to set up grudge matches with both men.
The Package Piledriver by Owens was a big deal because piledrivers are banned in WWE due to being a move that could potentially injure somebody. For many years, Vince McMahon only allowed The Undertaker and Kane to use the Tombstone Piledriver. The ban on piledrivers continues to exist even after McMahon left the company.
While speaking to Insight’s Chris Van Vliet, Kevin Owens talked about WWE letting him use the Package Piledriver.
“The package piledriver was something I’ve asked many times before, and it was always ‘No, not right now, not today, doesn’t work, can’t do it.’ Until eventually it was, ‘Yeah, okay, let’s do it.’
I didn’t feel like hitting it on Randy was the best decision. I thought a normal piledriver was enough for Randy, because Randy is gigantic and quite frankly I didn’t think I could get him up for the package piledriver, because of the way his body needs to be. He’s just too massive.
But yeah, and then Cody at Saturday Night’s Main Event was the right time to do it. It was cool. I waited a long time to get to do that in WWE.
And the funny part is I knew Penta was coming, and Penta was doing package piledriver and I was like, he better not get to do it before me, because I will lose my s**t. But it all worked out.”
The piledriver variation that Penta uses is the Mexican Destroyer, which is like the Canadian Destroyer popularized by Petey Williams, but it’s a flip into a piledriver.
Kevin Owens Will Miss Significant Time After Neck Surgery
It was reported by Dave Meltzer in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that Kevin Owens underwent neck surgery on April 7th. Owens will be unable to wrestle while he recovers, so he’ll likely be on the sidelines for anywhere from six months to a year, or it could be even longer than that. Many wrestlers do come back from that type of surgery.
Even though Owens had some very physical matches recently against Cody Rhodes and Sami Zayn in PLE matches, Kevin Owens said he suffered the injury during a regular singles match in January.
Kevin Owens initially announced his neck injury on the April 4th edition of SmackDown. He was scheduled to face Randy Orton at WrestleMania 41, but that won’t happen now. Orton reacted to the news by hitting an RKO on SmackDown GM Nick Aldis while Orton will likely be given a new opponent.