Kevin Owens Credits Randy Orton For Recommending Surgeon, Opens Up About Damage That Was Done To His Spinal Cord

Randy Orton put Kevin Owens in contact with his surgeon.

After over a year away from WWE, Kevin Owens made his return to the company at SummerSlam and won a Fatal 4-Way match to become the new number one contender for the Undisputed WWE Championship.

Immediately after his win, Owens was interviewed by Sam Roberts for WWE Now. Speaking about his recovery from neck surgery, Owens credited Randy Orton for recommending the same surgeon who performed Orton’s spinal fusion surgery.

Owens then opened up about the damage that had been done to his spinal cord. He added that at one point, his bones were not growing.

“So I had the best surgeon, Dr. Adam Kanter. I just texted him that actually. I cannot thank him enough for what he did. I’ll forever be in debt to him but, Randy Orton is the one who actually put me in touch with him. WWE has an amazing medical staff. We had an amazing surgeon who we worked with all the time… Randy had worked with Kanter. Adam Kanter’s the one who did Randy’s back surgery and saved his career, and he recommended that I talk to Adam Kanter as well, get several opinions on how to handle this neck surgery. I decided to go with Adam Kanter because if Randy Orton could trust him — there’s not a whole lot of people in wrestling I respect more than Randy — I trust Adam Kanter. I’m so glad I went in that direction. So, as amazing a surgeon as he is, the severity of my injury and damage to my spinal cord was so severe that even though they decompressed my spinal cord a lot, fixed a lot in there, there was still chances that I’d have lasting effects of the damage, and at one point, my bones weren’t growing exactly how they should or as fast as they do for other people. So, we kept doing scans and scans and scans. It didn’t look the way it was supposed to so, it was scary. It was scary…”

Orton made his return to WWE at SummerSlam as well and cost Cody Rhodes the Undisputed WWE Title bout.

If the quote in this article is used, please credit WWE Now with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.