Posted on 4/10/125 by Colin Vassallo
Kevin Owens recently appeared on the Insight With Chris Van
Vliet podcast where he discussed a variety of subjects
including wrestling “Stone Cold” Steve Austin at
WrestleMania 38, the post-show angle at Bad Blood,
headbutting Vince McMahon, and more.
On wrestling Steve Austin at WrestleMania 38:
So I would have to admit tying back to how he came back,
when I asked him to use the Stone Cold Stunner yes, I wanted
a new finishing move and yes, I think it’s the greatest
finish of all time. But there was a big part of me who
thought in the unlikely event, which won’t happen, but if he
ever were to come back for a match, it’s going to be against
the guy who was doing his finishing move, and that’s exactly
what happened. So I don’t think that played a part in it. I
think Vince wanted him to be on the 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.”
On whether Austin stiffed him in the match:
“Yeah. Actually the night of the match, when I go back to my
hotel my earlobe was swollen like this big from his punches.
I went [squeezes] and it just splattered against the mirror.
He kept saying, ‘You didn’t give me any receipts.’ What am I
gonna do? But honestly in that moment I felt the punches but
they weren’t any worse than anything I felt before. But to
him, that shows how much of a pro he is. Bret has always
prided himself on how he’s never hurt anyone. You could
barely feel him in the ring and stuff, and that’s amazing. I
think Steve was the same way, so he prided himself on not
killing people and that night he knew he was killing me. But
to me it was not any worse than other guys.”
On the offscreen angle with Cody Rhodes at Bad Blood:
“It wasn’t me. That was Triple H. That was his idea. He felt
confident in doing it that way. I was not sure. I’m like I
don’t know, is there even going to be enough people there?
It turns out he was completely right, there was and yeah,
it’s just a different way of telling the stories and he’s
got a different mentality than Vince had. It’s really
interesting and people really responded to it. The same
thing with Randy, the way I ended up ultimately turning on
Randy. It was on TV, but it was done differently. It was
something that was released later as well and you just kind
of caught the tail end of it on TV, but then they did the
security footage after. He wants to tell stories
differently, he’s willing to try stuff out and see what
sticks and I think that makes the show way more interesting.
It doesn’t mean it’s always gonna work, there might be
sometimes it doesn’t land, but we’re trying different things
and new things, and I think that’s so important in
wrestling. When it gets monotonous and repetitive, no matter
how good the matches are and the promos are. If you feel
like you’ve seen it before, and it’s ok that you’ve seen it
before, if you see a rematch once or twice, great. But there
were times over I’d say in 2008-2009, and I was an avid fan.
I would never miss any WWE shows, even when I was an
independent wrestler traveling the world, but I started
paying a lot less attention in 08-09 because I felt like
this is literally the same thing every single week. There
were times where even when I was here, like 2016-2017 I felt
like we just did this two weeks ago and now we’re doing it
again. To me, when it gets like that it’s just not the way
we need to do things. I think we need different things.
There’s new things. We need to try stuff, and it has to feel
unpredictable and exciting.”
On attacking Vince McMahon:
“He just talked all kinds of sh*t. He’s shaking my hand and
just saying, I don’t remember what he said, but he was
really trying to provoke me because he wanted to make sure I
was going to lay in that headbutt. Little did he know I was
already planning on laying it in because I had worked for
him for two years at that point, I wasn’t going to miss that
chance. So I did and yeah, it was a pretty insane moment.
When he came up with the blood and everything I was like
whoa, here we go. But my favorite part of that whole thing
was after, it’s a moment that was only seen. I don’t think
it was on TV, maybe only caught by digital. As everybody’s
tending to Vince I’m walking in the back and I turn around
to look at the ring. I’m just looking at the ring, and I
hear kind of like a rumble in the crowd. I go to turn, and
as I turn Stephanie’s right there in my face. She looks
furious. She just looks at me and goes, ‘Get the f*ck to the
back!’ And I go, okay, and I turn around. Look, I really
like Stephanie a lot. She’s been great, just been so
supportive of not just me, but everybody. When Hunter was
running NXT and we all got there at the same time, my crop
of NXT guys me, Sami, Finn, Bayley, Becky, Charlotte…
Stephanie would be at the NXT shows quite a bit and she was
just always so supportive and so just proud of us. And yeah,
it was great. It’s like that whole generation of NXT was so
special, not just because of the talent there, but the
support we had from all the trainers to Dusty, Hunter and
Stephanie. They really felt like we were to a degree kind of
their kids and they were trying to get us out into the
world. That was really special to be around that kind of
energy.”