During an appearance on Ryan Satin’s Out of Character podcast, Kevin Owens talked about his first time meeting Steve Austin:
“That’s something that defined my character. It really did. It sounds like almost an exaggeration to say that my career may not have turned out the way it did without that meeting, but it’s really true. I met him in 2005 in an airport in Texas. Sami Zayn and I were connecting to a PWG show.”
“We were walking to our gate. I was walking to get a drink of water, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Stone Cold. I was like, man, I have to talk to him. This is literally my idol. I go back over to Sami. I said, ‘C’mon, we’re going to talk to Stone Cold.’ We walked up to him, introduced ourselves, and said we’re independent wrestlers on the way to California for a show. He was so nice, very friendly. We talked a little bit about the business and how the independents work because he obviously hasn’t been on the independent scene in a while. Then they called the first class passengers so we had to go. I said to him, ‘If you have one piece of advice for us, what is it?’ He said, ‘Just keep running your mouth. Never stop running your mouth.’ That piece of advice, I immediately put it into work. That was the week that I won the PWG title for the first time against AJ Styles, and I was talking the whole match, like non-stop. It really became a staple of my independent career, and now into WWE. I think it’s actually one of the things people enjoy the most about my work. It helped take me to a level that I hadn’t attained at that time, so who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t given me that piece of advice.”
