Kevin Owens shares neck injury update: ‘It’s been a frustrating process’

Kevin Owens addressed his neck injury during the latest episode of Cody Rhodes’ podcast, So What Do You Wanna Talk About?

On the April 4 edition of WWE SmackDown, Owens announced he would miss WrestleMania 41 and needed neck surgery. He posted an update to social media last month stating that he had not had the surgery yet and doctors were still determining the best course of action. During his discussion with Rhodes, Owens said the plan is to let his spine heal on its own as much as possible before surgery.

“It’s been such a frustrating process,” Owens said. “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,” he later added. “Hopefully, it’s a normal neck fusion. It might not be, we don’t know.”

Owens said that he had not been in much pain the last few months, but noted that the last week has been difficult.

“So since then, I felt fine. My neck’s been fine. I’m not in pain. I have no symptoms of what you would expect somebody with spinal cord injury have to have,” he said.

“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–king brutal. I can’t wait for the surgery. And then to move forward, whatever that looks like but it’s been very frustrating.”

Kevin Owens details dune buggy accident with Cathy Kelley and Jamie Noble

In an interview with B4TheBell last November, Cathy Kelley revealed that she and Owens had been involved in a dune buggy accident while in Saudi Arabia. Kelley credits Owens with saving her life.

Owens described the incident to Rhodes:

“If you wanna take a tumble in the desert in a golf cart with people, Jamie Noble, Cathy Kelley, best people you could do it with.”

Owens noted that Kelley entered the dune buggy after him and Noble and did not receive safety instructions about what to do in the event the buggy rolls as they had.

“Going through the dunes, great time, amazing time. And then as we go up a dune, I see the buggy in front of us, almost go. And in my head, I go, ‘Oh, we’re gonna go.’ And as we start going, in my head, I go, Cathy doesn’t know how to keep her f–king hands in. So I just reached around and grabbed her arms and as we’re rolling, I’m holding on to her.”

“I didn’t save her life, I didn’t save her arms, but I tried to make sure she was safe. And then both of us experienced this incredible thing, which is we’re upside down in the golf cart, there’s sand pouring down our face, our ears, everything. And all we hear is Jamie Noble going, ‘My ribs, my ribs, my ribs, my ribs, ahhh…I’m okay.”

Kevin Owens and Cody Rhodes on working with Sami Zayn

Also during the podcast, Owens and Rhodes spoke about how working with Sami Zayn can sometimes be frustrating because he will want to change things last minute. Still, Owens credits Sami with keeping their tag team title run entertaining in the months following WrestleMania 39.

“When we were Tag Team Champions, we had a bit of a sh-t run. 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. And dude, we wrestled Judgment Day about 17 times in a row. We had them rocking every time. And 95 percent of that credit for that goes to Sami.”

Owens and Rhodes later joked that nobody gets more upset about Sami’s process than Damian Priest.

“No one hates that process more than Damian Priest. He will, oh my God, I’ve seen him lose it,” Owens said through laughter. “And then we come back and they’re like, ‘It worked.’”

Matt Riddle has also publicly stated working with Owens and Zayn could be difficult, saying “It’s hard to put a complete sentence together with those guys” during an interview with Going Ringside earlier this year.

Owens’ full appearance on What Do You Wanna Talk About? is available below: