During last year's WrestleMania, Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn ended The Usos' record-breaking Undisputed Tag Team Championship reign in the main event of Night 1.
Their title reign ended up disappointing many fans (they didn't even make it onto the Money in the Bank card, for example) and KO acknowledged its failings during a recent interview. While he's happy with the matches he and Zayn had, it sounds like he had higher hopes for their time together.
"I'll say this, me and Sami worked our asses off to give main events on 'Raw' every week, that had people going wild, and we succeeded," he started. "I'm not one to toot my own horn, I really am not, but I think Sami and I did a lot of special things as champions that went under the radar because they weren't on pay-per-views."
"They weren't in the big, you know, under the big, bright lights, they were usually on 'RAW.' But we had some very special matches and it was great, it was great to have that with them, regardless."
"What I wish we could have accomplished, one of the things I had said before we won the title is I hope we were going to do justice to the run that Usos had with them," Owens continued. "I don't think we got the chance to do that but we...it's certainly not for a lack of trying."
Despite Triple H being in charge during their stint with the titles, the booking did let the duo down and it's easy enough to understand why Owens is frustrated. Last year's WWE Draft separated him and Zayn, with the latter on RAW and the former Universal Champion now part of SmackDown.
This echoes comments made by Owens last summer, during his and Zayn's title reign, when he expressed dissatisfaction with how things had been going.
"One of the things that I was concerned about before winning them is that when we did get them, I wanted to live up to the Usos title reign. They did a lot for these titles. They worked very hard to get them to the point where they could main event WrestleMania. A lot credit goes to them for that. Honestly, so far in our run, I don’t think we’re anywhere near that. I really want to work really hard, and once we’re all said and done with these titles and somebody else takes them from us, I want to our run to be talked about in the same vein as the Usos."
"That’s a challenge in itself, they did really incredible. If anything, now, finally, they’re getting their flowers. They’ve been, in my opinion, underappreciated for a long time. That was a big concern to me. I want to live up to the work they’ve done and we’re working our heart out to try to make sure that happens. That’s the one concern for us, to make sure these titles stay at the forefront of stories and keep being as important as they’ve been the last few months."
You can watch the full interview with Owens in the player below.