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Before announcing his neck injury on WWE Friday Night Smackdown last night, Kevin Owens taped an appearance on the "My Mom's Basement" podcast with Robbie Fox, which you can watch below:
Below is a transcript of the conversation about Owens' injury:
Robbie Fox: Not to kick things off on like a somber note, but as of today, I'm seeing a lot of word on Twitter online that you're potentially dealing with an injury right now leading it to WrestleMania. Is that true?
Kevin Owens:Yeah. Yeah, it is. Obviously this is gonna be after SmackDown, right? Yeah. Oh. Yeah. So I'm actually gonna announce tonight. I can't do WrestleMania. Yeah.
Fox: And why is that? Are you willing to disclose what the injury is?
Owens: Yeah, I have to go have neck surgery, which 25 years in with the stuff I've done, I feel like it was bound to happen, but it sucks, man. The timing sucks for sure.
Fox: I'm very sorry about that.
Owens: The timing is obviously, like I said I knew, I feel, I hope it would never happen. Obviously nobody hopes for it, but I felt like I was actually, I just did a an interview with Chris 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. 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, yeah, there's some something going on with my neck.
Fox: And is it a buildup of the 25 years of your career, was there like a specific moment the neck was injured? Do you even know that?
Owens: Yeah, no. So I know for a fact there's a specific moment because in December I did a full body MRI just on my own for curiosity. Just like to make sure, to see if there's anything that I should be aware of, and it's the thing where yeah, it, you could see if there you have issues with your bone structure or whatever, or even organs, anything like that and at the time the report came back that my knees were sh**, but I've been well aware of that for a long time, so there's no concern there, but there's something about my spine and, mild to moderate stenosis, which for what we do, and I, I showed it to the WWE doctors and yeah, for what you guys do, everyone's got a level of stenosis. Everyone on Earth walking around has a level of stenosis. Yours is your spine and your neck and everything looks good. Everything looks good for what you've been doing. You're fine. So great. And I felt great, 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. Yeah. So I think that match in January is what did it, because I had an MRI a month before that and everything looked fine,
Fox: I know it's so fresh, obviously, as well, but do you know if it's comparable at all to wrestling neck injuries that we've seen in the past? Have you hit up anyone yet that obviously has had neck injuries or dealt with them?
Owens: Yeah, I've talked to a few people. I just, I honestly, it's funny when the WWE doctor called me to tell me about it, I was shocked. I knew there was something wrong, but I didn't expect it to be it. It's so wrong that you can't even do WrestleMania. I thought it's, 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 trying, he was explaining to me everything that's happening, what we're gonna do. I honestly, right now, I can't even sit you and tell you, sit here and tell you I know what, like I know what the next step is, but I almost don't know what the exact injury is like what's, the, yeah, 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, I don't know if it's similar or not to other people. I know that the solution is very similar to what a lot of other people have done, so I know that much, the surgery you're talking about.
Fox; And when is...do you have that scheduled? Is that like an immediate thing or No?
Owens: No, it's so new. This was all, this all happened yesterday. Obviously, 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.
Fox; I'm sorry, the timing is so bad on it. Are you dealing with it okay mentally now?
Owens: Yeah, I'm okay man. I have a great support system. I have my my family is great. My co-workers are great and everything. It sucks, man. Just not getting to wrestle Randy Orton at WrestleMania really sucks. Yeah. That's that's the part that bugs me the most, at least, I know I'll come back. At the very least, I really hope I come back. I guess there's, I never take anything for granted in what we do, so who knows? But, pretty likely to come back and then maybe we could do it eventually, but this year was going to be, this year is going to be me versus Randy Orton at WrestleMania, which is huge to me. So I, at least I take comfort in knowing that I did it last year. I was in the ring with him at WrestleMania last year. Yeah. But this year we wouldn't have had the other annoying guy in it. That would've been nice, but it's okay.
Fox: Does it annoy you when things leak like this? Like throughout the day? Not the details of it, but the fact that, that's like straight up HIPAA stuff, right? Like we're talking about an injury.
Owens: Yeah. It really annoys me, actually. I woke up to seeing that it was already leaked and I really, it really upsets me, especially because I know that whoever leaked it is some office employee that shouldn't know this sh** in the first place. That was my...I told. People like this is going to leak. They're like, '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.
Fox; Do you know a timetable for return recovery? Anything like that yet?
Owens: No, I don't know. I haven't talked to the surgeon or anything like that yet. I'm going to do all that on Monday. I know that most of the people that have gone through similar things have probably, six months to eight months to a year. So, I would assume it within those range in that range, but I don't really know. Like I said it's all really new right now.
Fox: Yeah. Do you think anything from the last two PLE matches you had, could have worsened it? You took some of the most insane bumps I've ever seen in both of those matches...
Owens: This is the funny part, right? I know that some of my detractors, and there's plenty out there, will say, seed, 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.
PWInsider.com sends our best to Owens for a quick and painless recovery.
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