Kevin Owens set himself a deadline the day he had neck surgery: get back in a WWE ring before John Cena retired.
Owens returned Sunday at SummerSlam after 17 months away, pinning Sami Zayn to win the No. 1 Contender’s match. On WWE Now’s SummerSlam recap, he revealed the recovery was built around a race he ended up losing.
July 18th, 2025 was my surgery. Usually, six months after the surgery is the first scan. I start asking them to do a scan at three months because when I was 20 years old, I had ACL surgery and most people take nine months to get back from that. Took me three, so I’m like, this is the same thing. In three months, my bones are fused. Because in my head, I’m like, ‘I’m gonna come back before John Cena retires so I can wrestle him one last time.'
Cena wrestled his final match in December 2025. Owens never got close, and the scans kept telling him so.
[The doctors] humored me and did the scan. They’re like, ‘Yeah, not happening.’ I did another scan at four months because I wanted to come back in Montreal in January. They’re like, ‘We can’t do it.’ Did another scan at six months which is when we were supposed to do it, and they’re like, ‘It’s still not right.’ So then they’re like, ‘We’re not doing a scan for another long while.'
“Maybe It Just Won’t Happen”
The waiting wore on him. Owens admitted that watching the roster move on without him, with younger names like Oba Femi and Trick Williams rising, planted real doubt.
A lot happens in wrestling and throughout that time, as I watched, sometimes I watched and thought, ‘Has this passed me by?’ I’m 42 years old. We got the guys like Oba [Femi], Trick [Williams], the younger guys are coming up. I’m not that no more. Can I do the [stuff] I used to do? I don’t know.
He also acknowledged how bad things were physically before the operation.
Every scan, I go, ‘Okay, I know I can’t wrestle but can I run the ropes?’ They’re like, ‘Nope. Nope, nope.’ So I’m like, I don’t even know if I can run the ropes because before my surgery, running the ropes was an arduous task. It was difficult.
A nine-month scan still came back short, and Owens said he started to wonder if the comeback would happen at all. Then a scan at the start of July finally cleared him.
We did one at nine months; still wasn’t good. So by that point, I’m like, ‘Man, maybe it just won’t happen.’ So then finally I did a scan beginning of July… I got back in the ring for the very first time on July 18th this year, one year to the day after my surgery.
Three weeks later, Owens was back at SummerSlam and walked out as the next challenger for CM Punk’s Undisputed WWE Championship. He’s already made clear he has no plans to pace himself now that he’s back.
