WWE veteran Kevin Owens spoke with the Toronto Sun about various topics, including how he wrestled for months while knowing something was wrong, but not knowing the exact nature of his injury.
Owens said, “Starting in January, we were well aware something wasn’t right. We just didn’t know the extent and just exactly what the issue was, because every symptom I was reporting to the medical staff weren’t indicative of a spinal cord injury or a neck injury or anything like that. So, it just took a little while to get there. But, um, you know, things have gotten better in between. And so by, you know, early January, something was wrong. Then it got better. And then, you know, I had pretty insane ladder match with Cody Rhodes at the Royal Rumble, which I managed to walk away from relatively okay. And uh then, you know, the match at Elimination Chamber happened. And at the end of that match, I realized, oh, things still are not right cuz my legs were not — the best way I could put it is my legs just didn’t function properly. They weren’t responding how they should. So once that happened and then it didn’t get better, we obviously realized something pretty serious was was going on.”
He continued, “So we finally dug a bit deeper and did an MRI, which originally wasn’t thought to be necessary because nothing I was reporting seemed to indicate that an MRI would be the answer. Uh, but it turned out it was. Once we saw all the damage and everything that was going on, they told me right away, you’re done. You need the surgery. And it wasn’t just the damage that was there. It was also for myself personally. I happened to have some sort of condition with the way my bones grow in my neck that made my case different than everybody else’s that had the surgery before me. So that made things more complicated and more uncertain. From from the time they told me where I got to have the surgery to the time I had the surgery to the time they told me I was good to go, all that was very uncertain, like there was never a guarantee that I’d get back in the ring at all.”
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(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
