Kevin Owens opens up about the surgeon who helped him make his WWE return.
Kevin Owens made his long-awaited return at WWE SummerSlam after spending more than a year on the sidelines with what was considered a career-threatening neck injury.
Speaking with Sam Roberts on WWE Now (see video below), Owens praised Dr. Adam Kanter for helping him get back in the ring, revealing that Randy Orton was the one who connected him with the surgeon who previously performed Orton’s career-saving back surgery.
“I had the best surgeon, Dr. Adam Kanter. I cannot, I just texted him that actually, I cannot thank him enough for what he did,” Owens said. “I will forever be in debt to him.”
Owens then explained how Orton’s recommendation played a major role in his decision.
“Randy Orton is actually the one who put me in touch with him,” Owens said. “WWE has an amazing medical staff; we have amazing surgeons who we work with all the time, right? But Randy had worked with Kanter. Adam Kanter was 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.”
Owens said Orton’s trust in Kanter ultimately convinced him to move forward with the procedure.
“I decided to go with Adam Kanter, because if Randy Orton could trust him, there’s not a lot of people in wrestling I respect more than Randy, I trust Adam Kanter.”
Despite the successful surgery, Owens admitted the recovery process was far from easy because of the severity of the damage to his spinal cord.
“I’m so glad I went in that direction,” Owens continued. “So, as amazing a surgeon as he is, the severity of my injury, and the damage to my spinal cord was so severe that even though they decompressed my spinal cord a lot, fixed a lot in there, there are still chances that I’d have lasting effects on the damage.”
“At one point my bones weren’t growing exactly how they should, or as fast as they do for other people,” he added. “So we kept doing scans and scans and scans, and it just, it wasn’t, it didn’t look the way it was supposed to. So it was scary.”
Owens also reiterated comments he made during the SummerSlam post-show, noting that he underwent scans every few months throughout his recovery. He revealed that he had hoped to be back in time to face John Cena during Cena’s retirement tour, but the timeline simply didn’t work out.
“So actually, July 18, 2025 was my surgery,” Owens said. “Usually six months after the surgery is the first scan. I started asking to do a scan in three months because when I was 20 years old, I had ACL surgery, and most people take nine months to get back from, that took me three.”
He continued, “So I’m like, ‘This is the same thing.’ In three months, my bones are fused because in my head, I’m gonna come back before John Cena retires so I can wrestle him one last time.”
