When Kevin Owens and Cody Rhodes lock up with the Undisputed WWE Championship on the line on Saturday at Bash in Berlin, their careers will intersect in a way many didn’t imagine just eight years ago.
Firmly established as a top star in NXT in 2015, Owens wasted little time making his presence felt in his transition to the main roster. In less than a full calendar year, Owens moved from holding the NXT Championship to a rivalry with John Cena, and eventually claimed the Intercontinental Championship. At the same time, Rhodes was unhappy, felt like he deserved more, and was considering leaving WWE amid his run as Stardust. As Rhodes weighed that decision, he was met with support from his longtime friend, Owens.
“At the very least, he felt like he needed a reset and to go do something different so that he would be viewed different by the people that were running WWE at the time, and I encouraged him to do that,” Owens tells Uproxx Sports.
Funny enough, Cody was not the first member of the Rhodes family with whom Owens grew close. Like many who came through the NXT pipeline, Owens can’t help but speak highly of Dusty Rhodes, and quickly hit it off with Cody as a result. It got to the point that, when Cody opted to leave WWE, Owens admits he struggled, as “I was really losing somebody I considered like a brother.”
When Rhodes left, Owens helped him as much as he could, putting him in touch with friends that could help since he’d never been on the independent scene. As Rhodes toured the indies and began to rebuild his image across Ring of Honor and various promotions, Owens remembers seeing the tide turn.
“I remember texting him a lot after those matches, very often telling him like, ‘Hey, this is what you were missing,'” he recalls. “When he left, he just got this whole change of attitude, a whole change of how he carried himself and he just threw caution to the wind, I guess he just went all in and it ended up working out for him. I always knew he had that in him and so did he, which is why he left.”
While Rhodes was making his name elsewhere, Owens continued his rapid rise up the WWE roster. Just a year into his main roster tenure, Owens captured the WWE Universal Championship for the first time in career, holding the belt for seven months before dropping it to Goldberg.
“It wasn’t the most memorable run,” Owens reflects. “At the time, I didn’t really appreciate it for what it was. So I’d love to be able to get another run at it, another shot at it, and have a good championship run. Just be able to look back at a run and be able to say I was a good champion.”
In the past few years, that’s been a change in mindset for Owens. He says he’s done a lot of work trying to live in the moment, enjoying and appreciating what he gets to experience in his career — earlier during his time with the promotion, Owens admits he never took the time to take a step back and realize how fortunate he was to be in that position, which has led to a conscious effort to “keep things in perspective.”
For Owens, it’s no small feat to have retained a top spot in WWE over the last decade.
“I had no expectations (coming into WWE) and I was told many times by a lot of people when I started not have expectations,” he says. “In fact, I was told at the time you’re probably only going to be in NXT. I had no expectations at all. I don’t think anybody did. I remember, I just passed 10 years last week that they re-announced my signing. And I was reminded on social media by a lot of people, I remember people saying I probably won’t last six months because who I was, how I looked, all kinds of stuff. So I think to say that my career in the WWE over the last 10 years exceeded expectations is an understatement.”
Owens has carved a unique place in the hearts of wrestling fans. He’s a character who at his core is consistent. He consistently has good matches, is endlessly entertaining, and is constantly pushing the boundaries of what fans have grown to know and expect from professional wrestling.
“It seems like most of the audience, from what I can tell, enjoys what I do. And when I go back and watch what I do, mostly, I enjoy it — I take a lot of pride in that,” Owens says. I just want people to enjoy what I do. I want to contribute positively to the television program I’m on and to the shows I’m on. Once I feel that’s not the case anymore, I’ll be out of here. But until then, I pride myself on putting up good stuff. Pretty much everybody at WWE does, which is why I think WWE is so, I don’t want to say hot, but it is. It’s hot. It’s on fire right now. I think that’s just because everybody works extremely hard, everybody prides themselves on their work, and the audience is enjoying what we’re doing.”
Just how long the 40-year-old Owens has left wrestling is up in the air. While his contract is set to expire with WWE in early 2025, he hasn’t signed an extension.
“I don’t have a decade left here,” Owens adds. “Another 5, 6 years or something if the opportunities are there and the circumstances are right.”
He’d love another title run, in large part because it’d “probably make my daughter really happy,” but admits that won’t make or break things.
“Mainly, though, I really just want everything I do to be memorable and enjoyable for people watching, and I really want to help the future of the industry,” Owens says. “Whether, you could say work with the younger talent or whatever, but it’s not even necessarily younger talent, there’s talent of all ages that are coming up, that are developing. And I want to have a blast doing it.”
Owens specifically mentions that a lot of the women on WWE shows have continued to seek advice because they “really want to do everything that can to be as good as they can.” He also says he’s gone to the Performance Center and rolled around in the ring with anyone who wants to.
While NXT is in a very different place than it was when Owens held its top championship for 143 days in 2015, he still believes it’s the best place for developing talent. He’s consistently impressed whenever he gets the chance to tune in, and specifically credits the coaches along with Matt Bloom and Shawn Michaels for the work they’re doing.
“As the training goes, you can’t ask for a better place to learn, they’re doing an amazing job,” Owens says. “If you watch NXT on its own, without even considering Raw and SmackDown at all, you just watch NXT for what it is, they have their own stars in the NXT world, they’re huge stars. And the crowd goes crazy for them and cares about them. They’re doing a great job of making themselves into their own product. And making it very important for that fan base, and that’s pretty sweet.”
There’s a chance he is not the final member of the Owens family to spend some time down in NXT — his son stands 6’8 at 16 years old, which is the same age Owens was when he had his first match. While his son is interested in the opportunity, Owens admits that it’s probably too early to make any decisions on pursuing a wrestling career. We can say with some certainty, though, that the elder Owens is the overwhelming favorite to be the next member of his family to hold the Undisputed WWE Championship.
