Kevin Owens was medically cleared by WWE weeks ahead of the normal process.
Night 2 of SummerSlam kicked off with Kevin Owens making his triumphant return to WWE after 16 months out of action with a neck injury. The Prizefighter was a surprise addition to the Number 1 contenders’ match for the Undisputed WWE Championship, a bout he went on to win by pinning Sami Zayn.
Previously, Owens had said he was only cleared a couple of weeks before his return, and now he has explained how he was able to fast-track his comeback. Speaking to Faces Magazine, he said he was told there would be no shortcuts to getting cleared, but he was able to reduce the normal process from four weeks to only nine days.
“Yeah, everything was so quick. That’s the craziest part. By the time they told me I could get back in the ring, that was mid-July. I cut my vacation short to get back in the ring as soon as I could. There’s a process to get medically cleared, and the longer you’ve been out, the longer that process is, depending on the injury, the surgery and all of that stuff.
“Somehow, again, this is one of these cases where I’m kind of driving everybody nuts, and I kept asking how long until I’m cleared, how can I fast track it, what I can do to make it as soon as possible, this and that. And they were like well, there’s no shortcuts here. If this needs to happen, then it needs to happen. Usually, it takes about four weeks to get all of this done, I did it in nine days.”
Kevin Owens Was Cleared Two Weeks Before WWE SummerSlam
Instead of taking his time with each part of the process, Kevin Owens explained that he did multiple things back-to-back to get through it. It all paid off when he was cleared and then got the call to return at SummerSlam two weeks later.
“I basically took everything they wanted me to do, and instead of doing one thing one day, one thing the next day, one thing a few days later, I just did everything back-to-back-to-back. And, at the end of that they’re like ‘alright, you’re cleared.’
“Then I got the call about SummerSlam, and everything happened so quickly between the time I was told I can get back in the ring, and the time I was at SummerSlam, there was maybe two weeks.”
Kevin Owens is set to challenge CM Punk for the Undisputed WWE Championship on the August 21st edition of SmackDown in Toronto, Canada.
