WWE’s Kevin Owens Details How He Learned About Serious Injury

Kevin Owens will miss WrestleMania 41 due to a serious neck injury, and he has opened up about how he learned about it.

One of the biggest non-title matches at WrestleMania 41 was supposed to be between Kevin Owens and Randy Orton. The story was all about Orton wanting to connect with the Punt kick on Owens as payback for Owens giving him a Package Piledriver last November, which put Orton on the shelf for about four months.

However, that match is not happening now because Kevin Owens announced on WWE SmackDown in Chicago that he has suffered a serious neck injury that will prevent him from competing at WrestleMania 41.

In an interview that was taped before SmackDown with My Mom’s Basement with Robbie Fox, Kevin Owens talked about his upcoming neck surgery.

“I have to go and get neck surgery which, 25 years in with the stuff I’ve done, I feel like it was bound to happen. It sucks man, the timing sucks. I just did an interview with Chris [Van Vliet] and I was telling him how, for doing this for 25 years, I feel really great.

And even now I feel great, I do. It’s not like a constant problem but over the last few months I’ve had an issue in my matches that made me go, ‘I think something’s not right.’ And then we looked into it and found out there’s something going on with my neck.”

When asked how the injury happened, Owens revealed that there was a specific moment when he knew something was wrong.

“So I know for a fact there’s a specific moment [the injury occurred] because in December, I did a full body MRI just on my own for curiosity just to see if there’s anything I should be aware of. You can see if you have issues with your bone structure or organs or anything like that. At the time the report came back that my knees were s**t but I’ve been well aware of that for a long time so there’s no concern there.

And there was something about my spine, mild to moderate stenosis, and I showed it to WWE doctors and they’re like, ‘Yeah, for what you guys do everyone’s got a level of stenosis. Everyone on Earth walking around has a level of stenosis, but your spine and neck and everything else looks good. Everything looks good for what you’ve been doing. You’re fine’. I was like, ‘Great’ and I felt great.

But then in January I had a match and in the match I had two things happen that really jarred my neck and that’s when the issues started so I knew there was something. And then we ended up doing an MRI this week and found out that it’s serious. So I think that match in January is what did it because I had an MRI the month before that and everything looked fine.”

When Did Kevin Owens Find Out About Neck Injury?

Kevin Owens would go on to reveal that he found that he needed neck surgery on Thursday, April 3rd, just one day before SmackDown on April 4th in Chicago. He also spoke about talking to other wrestlers who have dealt with neck injuries in the past.

Yeah I’ve talked to a few people [who’ve dealt with neck injuries in the past]… When the WWE doctor called me to tell me about it, I was so shocked because I knew there was something wrong but I didn’t expect it to be so wrong that you can’t even do WrestleMania. I thought, ‘Yeah, we’ll take care of it after WrestleMania.’

So when he told me I couldn’t do it, I was so shocked that I stopped listening to him almost and he was explaining everything that’s happening and what we’re gonna do and I honestly can’t even sit here and tell you… like I know what the injury is but I kinda almost don’t know what the exact injury is.

I know something’s wrong with my neck and it’s affecting my mobility and whatever but I was just so zoned out. So I don’t know if it’s similar or not to other people, I know the solution is similar to what a lot of other people have done, I know that much. Surgery, yeah.

It’s all new, this just happened yesterday so tonight is SmackDown, I’m going to announce that I can’t do WrestleMania and then I’m gonna go see the crew we have in Birmingham to figure out what the next step is.

Elsewhere in the interview, Kevin Owens’ last two PLE matches against Cody Rhodes (a Ladder Match at the Royal Rumble) and Sami Zayn (an Unsanctioned Match at Elimination Chamber) were brought up due to how violent they were. Owens took some huge bumps in those matches.

When he was asked if those matches contributed to his neck injury, Kevin Owens dismissed that notion while claiming that the injury happened in a regular match.

This is the funny part, right? I know that some of my detractors, and there’s plenty out there, will say, see, this is why you shouldn’t do this stuff. This is why this. This is why that, but I am telling you it happened in a regular match. No hardcore things. There were two very simple things that I’ve done a million times and then I had the other, ultimately probably shouldn’t have had those matches considering what was happening, but we didn’t know, but, in those matches as crazy as they were, at no time did I feel like my neck, like I didn’t land on my head.

I didn’t get hurt. Like I don’t remember anything in those matches going, oh, my neck. Already that’s been like speculation today when people are responding to the reports that you might have an injury. I’ve seen so many replies that were like, oh yeah, he was legitimately injured after this match. He looked legitimately injured after this match. A lot, a lot.

That’s what a lot of people do, right? They make assumptions based on what they think they’ve seen. But our entire. Job, our entire craft is making people believe something that’s not actually happening. And I’m very good at that. So they can, like I saw people even try to claim that the barbed wire we use wasn’t real because I I wasn’t bleeding, but that’s not how barbed wire works.

If you land in it and get caught up in it, it’ll tear you up and then you’ll bleed. But if you just land on it and it’s wrapped tight around the chair, which it was, it’s just gonna poke, which is what happened to me. I had pokes, but I just didn’t, bleed all over the place. But that’s just what people do. They assume and whatever they, but like nothing I say will convince them otherwise either. Yeah.

Those people will go oh, he is just, he’s lying, which is fine, whatever, but yeah, it’s just, yeah I do think though, ultimately to a degree it had to be, wear and tear from 25 years. ’cause that’s the thing too. This injury has happened to guys who have done far less dangerous things than me throughout their career, and it happened way sooner.

Sometimes it’s just bad luck and I think in that match, those two things that happened were just off by this much and it just changed everything. (H/T PWinsider)

Everybody here at TJRWrestling wishes Kevin Owens good health as he does all he can to recover from this serious neck injury.

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