Kevin Owens gives an update on his future.
Weeks before WrestleMania 41, Kevin Owens was set to battle it out with Randy Orton on the grandest stage of them all. However, Owens had been dealing with a serious neck injury and had to announce he was pulling out of his match with the Legend Killer.
During a sit-down with Cody Rhodes on What Do You Want To Talk About?, Owens gave fans an update on when he was expecting to get surgery on his neck.
“It’s been such a frustrating process. We’re trying to let my spinal cord heal as much as it can on its own before we go in for the surgery. How extensive the surgery will be depends on how my spinal cord looks when we go in there. The trauma happened in January, it was building up, but January is what did it. Then we had this nice and easy ladder match where nothing crazy happened at all, and I kept going for a while. The first week in April is when we had the MRI and they were like, ‘You can’t even get hit. Don’t get hit. You might die.’ Everything took a turn and now it’s been four months almost since my last match. We’re waiting until mid-July to do the surgery. Hopefully, it’s a normal neck fusion. It might not be. We don’t know. Since then, I’ve felt fine. My neck has been fine, I’m not in pain. I have not really had any symptoms of what you would expect somebody with a spinal cord injury to have.
“In the last week, for some reason, the symptoms all came in one shot. Every symptom you’d expect me to have; the pain in the neck, the stuff going down the arms, the legs not really responding. It’s all been happening. It’s been pretty brutal. I can’t wait for this surgery. To move forward, whatever that looks like, it’s been very frustrating. I felt great. We had two incidents where, basically, in the ring, my legs fell asleep and I was like, ‘There is something wrong.’ We thought it was one thing, which is why we didn’t go right away for the neck because it wasn’t consistent with a neck injury. We looked at everything else and it wasn’t that. ‘Let’s take a look at the neck.’ It was that. Besides those two instances where my legs kind of fell asleep in the ring, I felt great. I’d have doctors call me. I’ve been very fortunate to have Randy [Orton], TJ [Wilson], and WWE put me in touch with all the best spine surgeons they have. They’re great. I’ve spoken to all these different surgeons, they give me their opinions on what they would do. All in the hopes that I can get back in the ring and be safe. I have all these opinions. All of them were like, ‘You don’t have any symptoms?’ ‘No, except for the time my legs fell asleep. I’m fine now. They came back. No pain, no discomfort, I’m great.’ The last week, everything hit. Now, it’s a different story. Now, I can’t wait to get the surgery. Not just because I want to get back in the ring, just because I want to not be in pain.”
Owens’ last match in the WWE was against Sami Zayn, his best friend and bitter rival. The two fought at Elimination Chamber, where Owens pulled off the win in a grueling match for both competitors.
H/t to Fightful for the transcription.
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