Kevin Owens says he spent the early months of his recovery pushing WWE doctors for scans they had not planned to run, because he wanted to be back in the ring in time to face John Cena before Cena retired.
Owens had neck fusion surgery on July 18, 2025. He had last wrestled on March 1 that year, beating Sami Zayn in an Unsanctioned Match at Elimination Chamber, and had been pulled from a scheduled match with Randy Orton at WrestleMania 41.
Speaking on WWE Now, Owens said the standard schedule called for a first scan six months after the operation, and that he asked for one at three based on how quickly he had recovered from a knee surgery two decades earlier.
“July 18, 2025 was my surgery. Six months after the surgery is the first scan; I started asking them to do a scan at three months because, when I was twenty years old, I had ACL surgery, and most people take nine months to get back from that, it took me three. So, I’m like, this is the same thing; in three months, my bones are fused.”
“Cos, in my head, I’m like I’m gonna come back before John Cena retires so that I can wrestle him one more time.”
Cena’s last match was on December 13, 2025 at Saturday Night’s Main Event in Washington, D.C., where he lost to GUNTHER. Being back before that would have meant returning inside five months of the surgery.
“They humored me and did the scan and they were like ‘Yeah, not happening’. They did another scan at four months because I wanted to come back in Montreal in January, and they’re like ‘we can’t do it’.”
The Montreal date was a separate target, after Cena had already gone. WWE ran the Bell Centre on January 23 and 24 this year, with SmackDown followed by Saturday Night’s Main Event. Owens is from Marieville, Quebec.
“Then, another scan at six months, which is when they were supposed to do it, they were like ‘It’s still not right’. Then they were ‘We’re not doing a scan for another long while’.”
“We did another one at nine months; it still wasn’t good. At that point, I was like it might not… maybe it just won’t happen, you know what I mean?”
Clearance came a year on.
“So, then, finally, I did a scan at the beginning of July, and they called me and said, ‘look, we saw enough progress and enough bone growth that we’re comfortable letting you get back in the ring and see how you feel and we’ll go from there’.”
“I got back in the ring for the very first time on July 18 this year, one year to the day after my surgery.”
Owens returned on Sunday at SummerSlam night two in Minneapolis, 17 months after his last match. Nick Aldis added GUNTHER and then Owens to what had been booked as Sami Zayn against Finn Balor, turning it into a four-way for the number one contendership. Owens pinned Zayn and will challenge CM Punk for the Undisputed WWE Championship.
