Kevin Owens has opened up on his WrestleMania showdown with Steve Austin.
Over the last decade, Kevin Owens has been one of WWE’s biggest stars. The 40-year-old is a former Universal Champion and has main evented WrestleMania on two separate occasions, one of which was a singles match against Steve Austin. Now, Owens has discussed what it was like to wrestle ‘Stone Cold’ at WrestleMania 38 after adopting his iconic finisher, as well as finally getting to use the package piledriver in WWE.
Speaking with Chris Van Vliet on Insight, Owens recalled frustrations in the lead-up to his ‘Mania showdown with ‘The Rattlesnake’, saying that the pair didn’t know if they’d be wrestling a match until the day of the show.
“I think Vince wanted him to be on WrestleMania in Dallas and he wasn’t sure in what capacity. I’m not sure how. I think they talked. He said no at first from what I understand. Then they went back to him, and he’s like, Okay, who would it be with? And I think that’s when they said me, which I think he was good with. Then somehow, was it going to be a talking segment? Was it going to be a match? Was it going to be a stunner? Literally up until the day of the show we had no idea. Me and Steve had talked, I would talk to Steve, ask him, ‘What are we going to do?’ And he goes, ‘I don’t know, depends on Vince.’ So I talked to Vince, and Vince goes depends on Steve. And I’m like can’t you guys talk to each other for f*ck sake? But yeah, up until that day we really didn’t know for sure what it was going to be, turned out to be what it was and it was pretty great. I’m very lucky to have been a part of it. To this day the craziest thing that I’ll ever have done in my career, and I don’t think anything will top it.”
-Kevin Owens
After using Austin’s famous stunner as a finishing move for many years, fans watching December 14’s Saturday Night’s Main Event were stunned to see Owens nail Cody Rhodes with a package piledriver, a move that had previously been banned. On this, ‘The Prizefighter’ discussed asking to do the move through the years before finally getting the green light.
“Well, the package piledriver was something I’ve asked many times before, and it was always No, not right now, not today, doesn’t work, can’t do it. Until eventually it was, yeah, okay, let’s do it. I didn’t feel like hitting it on Randy was the best decision. I thought a normal piledriver was enough for Randy, because Randy is gigantic and quite frankly I didn’t think I could get him up for the package piledriver, because of the way his body needs to be. He’s just too massive. But yeah, and then Cody at Saturday Night’s Main Event was the right time to do it. It was cool. I waited a long time to get to do that in WWE. And the funny part is I knew Penta was coming, and Penta was doing package piledriver and I was like, he better not get to do it before me, because I will lose my sh*t. But it all worked out.”
-Kevin Owens
Elsewhere in the interview, Owens discussed Triple H’s pitch to use fan footage to launch his feud with ‘The American Nightmare’, saying that he wasn’t initially a fan of the idea before seeing how well it went down with the audience.
Unfortunately, Owens recently revealed that he’s in need of neck surgery and will need to spend considerable time on the sidelines, causing him to miss his scheduled match with Randy Orton at WrestleMania 41. Of course, we wish him all the best with regard to his surgery and look forward to seeing what his future holds when he has recovered.
As always, we’ll aim to provide any further updates on Kevin Owens as soon as we hear more.
H/T to ChrisVanVliet.com for the transcriptions.
