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Kevin Owens sets the record straight about what led to him needing to have neck surgery

Aaron Rift

As seen during the April 4th 2025 edition of WWE Smackdown, it was revealed that Randy Orton vs. Kevin Owens for WWE WrestleMania 41 has been canceled due to Owens needing neck surgery. While speaking to Robbie Fox, Owens set the record straight about what led to him needing to have neck surgery…

“Doing this for 25 years, I feel really great. And even now, I feel great. I do. It’s not a constant problem. But over the last few months, I’ve had an issue in my matches that made me go, ‘I think something’s not right.’ And then we looked into it and found out, yeah, there’s something going on with my neck.

So I know for a fact there’s a specific moment because in December, I did a full body MRI just on my own for curiosity, just to make sure, to see if there’s anything that I should be aware of. At the time, the report came back that my knees were shit, but I’ve been well aware of that for a long time, so there’s no concern there. And then there’s something about my spine and mild to moderate stenosis, which for what we do, and I showed it to the WWE doctors and like, ‘Yeah, for what you guys do, everyone’s got a level of stenosis. Everyone on Earth walking around has a level of stenosis. But your spine and your neck and everything looks good. Everything looks good. For what you’ve been doing, you’re fine.’ So I was like, ‘great.’ And I felt great.

But then in January, I had a match, and in the match, two things happened that really jarred my neck. That’s when the issue started. So I knew there was something. And then we ended up doing an MRI this week and found out that, yeah, it’s serious. So I think that match in January is what did it because I had an MRI a month before that and everything looked fine.”

“So this is the funny part, right? I know that some of my detractors, and there’s plenty out there will say, ‘See, this is why you shouldn’t do this stuff.’ But I am telling you, it happened in a regular match, no hardcore things, nothing. There were two very simple things that I’ve done a million times. [I] probably shouldn’t have had those matches [Royal Rumble and Elimination Chamber], considering what was happening, but we didn’t know. But in those matches, as crazy as they were, at no time did I feel like my neck… I didn’t land on my head, I didn’t get hurt. I don’t remember anything in those matches going, ‘Oh, my neck.’ You know what I mean? Yeah.”