DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
TNA Fan World
HTML https://tnafans.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: WWE News
*****************************************************
#Post#: 33526--------------------------------------------------
Chat with Kevin Owens. Talks WWE, Family & more
By: ChrissiCalvert Date: December 3, 2015, 3:31 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
If you’re wondering about the exact moment Kevin Owens decided
he was going to punch John Cena right in his chiseled jawline,
it had nothing to do with pride, or titles, or even money. It
had everything to do, however, with family — Owens’ family, to
be exact.
“I took my son to a WWE show in Montreal,” Owens told WWE.com.
“I wasn’t in contact with WWE or anything like that [at the
time]. I was just an independent wrestler, and I took my family
to the show because my son wanted to see John Cena.”
Front row tickets were purchased and a perch at the guardrail
was secured, but this accommodation was about far more than a
good vantage point of the Cenation leader in action: The 15-time
World Champion typically takes a lap around the ring after his
matches to high-five his fans, and Owens’ son wanted a chance to
slap some skin with his hero.
More to the point, Kevin Owens wanted his son to slap some skin
with his hero.
“All I really care about is my son,” Owens said. Given that
Owens’ résumé reads less like a win-loss record and more like a
laundry list of obliterated enemies, betrayed friends and the
broken bones of anyone else unlucky enough to cross him, this
might seem more than a little surprising. But there you have it.
“I wanted my son to have this moment that he’ll remember forever
of John Cena coming out and shaking his hand.”
The moment did not occur. In a rare twist of fate, Cena headed
straight for the curtain after his match, and the Owens men were
left hanging. One of them took it harder than the other, and
it’s not the one you might expect.
“I remember my son was a bit sad,” Owens said. “Two minutes
later he was fine, but it stuck with me. And I told myself that
one day I would get in the ring with John Cena and I would make
him pay.”
Truth of the matter is, there isn’t much Owens wouldn’t do for
his family. Cena happened to stumble into KO’s path, but even if
he had given the boy that high five, there’s a solid chance KO
would have gone after him at some point anyway. For a
self-proclaimed “prizefighter,” knocking off Cena makes for a
pretty good payday.
So, as it turns out, does nearly every other of Owens’
increasingly brazen WWE milestones. Nearly breaking Sami Zayn’s
back to win the NXT Title landed him a champion’s paycheck that
boosted the family funds. Stepping to Cena during the U.S. Open
Challenge catapulted him from NXT to the main roster, with a
main roster salary to go with it. Raking Ryback’s eyes to win
the Intercontinental Championship … you get the idea.
“I enjoy every second I get in the ring,” Owens said. If you’ve
seen the look on his face when he destroys someone, you’ll know
that’s certainly true. “But there’s a bigger picture now and a
much bigger purpose to everything and it’s to take care of my
kids and my wife and make sure they have a good future.”
“Everything I do really is for my family. It’s not just a line,”
Owens said. “I leave Friday morning to go on the road to wrestle
for WWE to make money so I can come back Wednesday morning and
have money to provide for my family. Everything I have to do
in-between is what I have to do to make that happen.”
Even with social media in play, the life of a sports-entertainer
tends to retain some shroud of secrecy, especially when it comes
to spouses and children, so it’s probably forgivable if you
imagined Kevin Owens holed up in some solo, godforsaken Canadian
shack with only a punching bag and pictures of his enemies as
his decorations. That’s actually somewhat less unnerving than
the truth — that this brute has walked among us a suburban
father for a while now, living among the white picket fences of
Montreal with a wife and kids who think the world of him.
Yet for those who knew where to look, Owens has always had a
reputation for being a bad man in the ring and a good dad out of
it. Truthfully, he’s been walking that fine line ever since he
was bashing heads in Ring of Honor, when he’d tweet out funny
things his son, Owen (named after Owen Hart) would do.
When Owens’ daughter was born, he didn’t hesitate to share that
milestone, either. The first moments of her in his arms were
recorded for a YouTube show he’d been producing about life on
the independents, a “little thing” announcing her arrival to the
world.
“I guess people really responded to that,” Owens said, though
none latched more on to the concept than the late WWE Hall of
Famer, Dusty Rhodes, who was “adamant” that Owens incorporate
his love for his family into his in-ring work once KO made it
down to NXT.
“Dusty Rhodes told me, [this] is who you are. Don’t shy away
from that,” Owens said.
So, he did. No matter what he did or who he hurt, Owens listened
to The American Dream and didn’t make an effort to hide his
status as a father or husband. In one of his earliest main
roster appearances, The Prizefighter revealed his son was a Cena
fan as an aside and turned prickly when the crowd showered the
boy in boos. Owens’ Twitter, meanwhile, contains a treasure
trove of family moments nestled between the trash-talking and
rather impressive sprees of blocking his trolls.
“It’s not a conscious choice I made to put them out there,”
Owens said of bringing his family into the equation. “They’re
just such a huge part of my life that I can’t help but put them
out there.”
With free reign to basically be himself, Owens thrived
immediately, but any NXT veteran can tell you, getting called up
from Orlando is only half the battle. Owens had it rougher than
most, given that he was still NXT Champion when he got the nod
and had to defend that title in addition to integrating himself
onto the main stage.
“I had one day a week at home, if that, for those first two,
three months,” Owens said — one of the few times he truly
sounded agitated during the interview. “One day at home a week.
Maybe. So I wasn’t getting to see my son and it was really
starting to affect me, obviously.”
Apart from his ready-made stress relief between the ropes, Owens
found a solution, which, apart from a persistent use of
technology (“Thank God for FaceTime … I can’t imagine wrestlers
from the ’80s being on the road all the time without cell phones
and stuff like that.”), mainly involved renting a car and
bringing the whole family with him on the road — Griswold-style
— logging an ungodly amount of hours behind the wheel in the
process.
When that wasn’t an option, KO used WWE’s travel department to
arrange flights for both him and his boy so he could take Owen
on the road for some father-son bonding time.
“I took him out for a whole week before school started,” Owens
said. “He was with me at every show. He was there all day
backstage and everybody got to know him. It was really cool to
see him develop relationships with people I work with and people
I look up to.”
And yes, he even got to meet Cena. The two are now friends — the
various beatings Owens put on Cena, notwithstanding.
“It was crazy and hectic,” Owens said of the exhausting regimen,
which once included a marathon round trip from a Raw in Buffalo
to Montreal — Owen had to be home in time for school — and back
to Albany for a SmackDown taping. “But that extra time with my
family is invaluable.”
Family is not the only thing that motivates him, of course.
After Owens lost the NXT Title in a heartbreaker to Finn Bálor
only a couple of months after his main roster debut, The
Prizefighter needed a new piece of hardware. Luckily, he had a
ready-made piece of inspiration.
“For some reason, after I lost the NXT Title, [my son] said,
‘You have to get another title and you should go after the
Intercontinental Title.’ I said, ‘Why that one?’ He said,
‘Because it’s the coolest.’ So, to be honest, my son’s kind of
the reason I went after Ryback in the first place.
The fact that Owens himself was always partial to that title was
just a bonus. Having been given his marching orders from his
offspring, Owens dragged his fingernails across The Big Guy’s
eyes to win the championship and he’ll keep it until someone
knocks him off. Ryback couldn’t do it, and Owens has made it his
business since then to humble every beloved superman who comes
stumbling his way. That includes Cesaro, who he pummeled
ribs-first into the commentary table; Neville, who Owens
flattened in the recent WWE World Heavyweight Championship
Tournament, and Chris Jericho, who he humiliated during at Y2J’s
25th anniversary match in Madison Square Garden. (Owens’ family
was there for that as well, and it’s his favorite memory of the
night.)
Point is, as the old adage goes, you get into
sports-entertainment to make friends or make money, and KO isn’t
exactly filling up his contact list so much as his pockets. And
he’s fine with that. Friends don’t add zeroes to your bank
account or feed the individuals he treasures.
“When I leave wrestling, I want to make sure what I’ve done and
the sacrifices I’ve made can lead to a really good life for the
four of us,” he said without a trace of remorse. “And I want to
take care of my parents, and I want to take care of my wife’s
family, because they’re all sacrificing and helping and they’re
all willing to do it and they’re all happy to do it. I just want
to take care of my family.”
#Post#: 33528--------------------------------------------------
Re: Chat with Kevin Owens. Talks WWE, Family & more
By: tnafanforum Date: December 6, 2015, 10:29 am
---------------------------------------------------------
He is a great heel and I would like to see him in the main event
run ! But saying that I think he will never be a top player
because he is not wha WWE are looking for...
*****************************************************