Kevin Owens reveals Randy Orton’s role in recovery and attempt to return for John Cena match
Kevin Owens returned at WWE SummerSlam after being sidelined for a little more than a year due to a career-threatening injury.
On WWE Now, Owens told Sam Roberts that he was treated by the same surgeon who helped save Randy Orton’s career. He explained how the WWE star personally recommended Dr. Adam Kanter and it turned out to be a decision he says he has never regretted.
“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. I will forever be in debt to him.”
“Randy Orton is actually the one who put me in touch with him. 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.”
“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.”
“I’m so glad I went in that direction. 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. 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, and it just, it wasn’t, it didn’t look the way it was supposed to. So it was scary.”
Owens reiterated his statements from the WWE SummerSlam post show about multiple scans at a few month frequencies. However, he was hopeful to return in time for John Cena’s retirement tour for one last match but that did not materialize in his favor.
“So actually, July 18, 2025 was my surgery. 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. 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.”
Owens and Gunther were last-minute additions to the No.1 contender match for the Undisputed WWE Title at SummerSlam. The match originally featured Sami Zayn and Finn Balor.
Rosanne Raphael
Rosanne Raphael is a wrestling writer with over three and a half years of experience covering all things related to the industry. From a kindergarten teacher to PR Associate to turning her lifelong passion for the industry into a career, Rosanne is currently writing for F4W Online where she focuses on wrestling news, analysis, and storytelling.
Rosanne previously contributed to Sportskeeda as an Assistant Content Manager.
When not consumed by wrestling, Rosanne is a musician and an aspiring artist.
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