Perhaps because he was upset that word got out about his neck injury and took away his chance to share the news with fans himself first, Kevin Owens decided to tell the full story before anyone else did so. KO did that by recording an interview with Barstool Sports’ Robbie Fox before he told the SmackDown crowd in Chicago last night (April 4) that he needs surgery and will miss WrestleMania.
That episode of Fox’s show, My Mom’s Basement, dropped today. In it, Owens explains that his issues started in January — after a December MRI that revealed “mild to moderate stenosis”, but otherwise WWE doctors told him it looked great, saying, “Your spine and your neck and everything looks good. Everything looks good. For what you’ve been doing, you’re fine.”
While KO isn’t surprised about the news after a 25 year career that’s included more than a few hardcore-type matches, he says his injury ocurred “in a regular match. No hardcore things, nothing. There were two very simple things that I’ve done a million times.”
He continues:
“But then in January, I had a match. And in the match, two things happened 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, yeah, it’s serious. So I think that match in January is what did it, because I had an MRI a month before that and everything looked fine.”
Kevin doesn’t specify, but Cagematch only shows him wrestling in two matches that month: against Rey Mysterio on the Jan. 17 SmackDown, and against Jimmy Uso on the following episode. After that, it was only his two PLE matches, at Royal Rumble against Cody Rhodes and his unsanctioned match with Sami Zayn at Elimination Chamber.
Getting the news about his injury shocked Owens, so much so that he says:
“I know what the next step is, but I kind of almost don’t know what the exact injury is — like what’s the actual — I know something’s wrong with my neck and it’s affecting my mobility or whatever. But I was just so zoned out.”
He seems to be taking the situation in stride, but admits:
“I’m okay, man. I have a great support system. My family is great. My coworkers are great and everything. It sucks, man. Just not getting to wrestle Randy Orton at WrestleMania really sucks.”
And his other big regret is the one we mentioned at the top — not being able to tell fans himself due to the news leaking in the hours leading up to yesterday’s show:
“It really annoys me. Actually, I woke up to seeing that it was already leaked and it really upsets me, especially because I know that whoever leaked it is some office employee that shouldn’t know this shit in the first place.
“I told people like this is going to leak. They’re like, “No, no, we’re keeping it tight-knit.” But then yesterday, obviously some departments had to find out for some reasons. And now someone who shouldn’t know this stuff found out, and it went where it shouldn’t.
“And now I don’t — now, they took away my right to tell people, because now everybody knows already.”
He says surgery isn’t scheduled yet. But he offered a guess as to how long he’ll be out, and doesn’t want this to be the end:
“Most of the people that have gone through similar things—it’s probably six months to eight months to a year,. So I would assume in that range. But I don’t really know.
“I know I’ll come back or, at the very least, I really hope I come back. You know, I guess there’s — I never take anything for granted in what we do. So, who knows, but I’m pretty likely to come back.”
You can check out KO’s entire conversation with Fox here.
