Kevin Owens' WrestleMania match with Randy Orton was called off just weeks before the Show of Shows took place. We learned at the time that the Prizefighter was dealing with a serious neck injury, and he shared an update while talking to Cody Rhodes on his new podcast, So What Do You Wanna Talk About?
While KO's surgery is currently scheduled for mid-July, he's confirmed that the road to recovery has not been an easy one. In fact, it likely won't be until the surgery takes place that he'll learn whether his in-ring career is over.
"It’s been such a frustrating process," Owens shared. "We’re letting my spinal cord heal as much as we can on its own before we go in for the surgery because how extensive the surgery will be depends on how my spinal cord looks when we go in there."
"We’re waiting till mid-July to do the surgery. Hopefully, it’s a normal neck fusion. It might not be, we don’t know," he continued. "My neck’s been fine. I’m not in pain. I have no symptoms of what you would expect somebody with a spinal cord injury have to have."
Revealing that he was told he could die if he took another bump, Owens added, "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. So it’s been pretty f***ing brutal. I can’t wait for the surgery."
We wish KO all the best and hope for the most positive outcome possible. Owens has had a phenomenal WWE run, with a highlight coming when he main evented WrestleMania 39, winning the Tag Team Championships alongside real-life best friend Sami Zayn.
Unfortunately, what followed was not a highlight for the former Universal Champion. "When we were Tag Team Champions, we had a bit of a sh-t run," Owens acknowledged. "I remember before we won the titles, we kept saying we just hope we can live up to the Usos, what the Usos did, and we didn’t."
"But our role as Tag Team Champions at the time was closing out RAW, and it didn’t matter. RAW is a long show, three hours, make sure they’re awake by the end," he continued. "And dude, we wrestled Judgment Day about 17 times in a row. We had them rocking every time. And 95% of that credit for that goes to Sami."
WWE did drop the ball on Owens and Zayn's pairing. However, the company continues to struggle with its tag team division; things were going well on SmackDown until fairly recently, but none of the titles will be defended during at weekend's Night of Champions PLE.
You can watch the full interview with Owens in the player below.