Kevin Owens will be sidelined for several months due to a neck injury requiring surgery, ruling him out of WrestleMania 41 just weeks before his scheduled match against Randy Orton. While news of Owens’ injury first broke on Friday morning, he officially confirmed the diagnosis during an emotional in-ring promo on that night’s SmackDown.
In the promo, Owens revealed that he had been dealing with the injury for some time and would need to step away for surgery and recovery. According to PWInsider.com, backstage sources within WWE indicated that Owens is likely facing neck fusion surgery, a serious procedure that typically requires a significant recovery period.
Owens later discussed the injury in more detail during an appearance on My Mom’s Basement with Robbie Fox, sharing insight into how the injury developed and how he’s coping with being pulled from the biggest show of the year.
On how he’s dealing with: “’I’m okay, man. I have a great support system. You know, my family is great. You know, my co workers are great, everything, it sucks, man, just not getting to wrestle Randy Orton at WrestleMania really sucks. Yeah, that’s the part that bugs me the most. At least, you know, I know I’ll come back 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 pretty likely to come back. And then maybe we could do it eventually. This year is going to be me versus Randy Orton at WrestleMania, which is huge to me. 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 have been nice, but it’s okay.”
On the news leaking earlier: “Yeah, 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, and I told people like, this is gonna 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 they took away my right to tell people because now everybody knows already, so I know.”
On his timetable for his return: “No, I don’t know. I haven’t talked to, you know, the surgeon or anything like that yet. I’m going to do all that on Monday. I mean, I know that most of the people that have gone through similar things of probably, you know, six months to eight months to a year, yeah, so I would assume it within that range. But I don’t, I don’t really know, like I said, it’s all really new right now.”
