Kevin Owens Reveals Advice Steve Austin Gave Him When He Was Younger
During the latest episode of the Out of Character Podcast with Ryan Satin, WWE Superstar Kevin Owens joined the show to talk about the Road to WrestleMania 38.
The former WWE Champion also went in-depth about the influence a meeting with Steve Austin had on his career back in 2005. Owens told the lengthy story on the podcast, revealing how he and Sami Zayn met Austin at an airport in Texas on their way to a PWG show and revealed that that moment would change his career forever.
"That's something that defined my career, it really did," Kevin Owens said. "It sounds like such an exaggeration to say that my career might have never turned out the way it did without that meeting but it's really true, yanno? For those that haven't heard the story, I met him in 2005 in an airport in Texas, Sami Zayn and I were connecting on our way to do a PWG show.
"People question the validity of that story because of the name I just said because he was never in PWG, he carried my bags over there. We were connecting, it was our second connection, you get the cheapest flights possible, we had driven from Montreal to Albany, New York which is about a three and a half-hour drive.
"We drove in the middle of the night, hadn't slept and we fly to Chicago, connection into Texas and then finally to LA. We're exhausted and we're on the connection walking to our gate and then I walked to get a drink of water and I see out of the corner of my eye, it's Stone Cold. Clearly trying to be on his own, but I'm like man, I have to talk to him, this is my idol, I have to talk to him.
"I go back over to Sami and I don't want to alert everybody, I go 'Hey, hey, hey, come on. We're going to go talk to Stone Cold.' He's like 'What?' He follows me and I said 'We're going to go talk to Stone Cold,' and he thought I said 'Let's go fight these guys.' As we're walking toward Austin he's like 'Who are we fighting?' I'm like 'What, what are you... We're not going to going to go fight, we're going to go talk to Steve Austin.'
Despite the confusion a young Kevin Owens made it clear to his friend El Generico (Zayn) that they were about to meet one of their heroes.
"He looks at me and he's like 'That's not Steve... oh sh**, it is.' So we walk up to him and we introduced ourselves, said we were on our way to California for a show and he's so nice, very friendly and we shot the sh** a little bit about the business and how the independents work because obviously, he hadn't been on the independent scene in quite a while.
"Then they called the first-class passengers and of course, Mr. Fancy Pants was first class so he had to go and I go, I can't let him walk away without... 'Hey if you have one piece of advice for us, what is it?' And he goes 'Just keep running your mouth. Just never stop running your mouth.' Then he goes 'That Plancha sh** will kill you.' As he said that, he looks at Sami actually because I think he figured from the body types one is more likely to Plancha than the other and then he left."
Continuing to talk about the impact that moment meeting Stone Cold had on his career, Owens revealed that he took that advice and immediately started focusing more on talking during his matches.
"That piece of advice man, I immediately put it into work," Kevin Owens said. "That was the weekend I won the PWG title for the first time against AJ Styles. I was talking sh** the whole match like nonstop and it really became a staple of my independent career and now into WWE. I think it's actually one of the things people enjoy most about my work. It helped take me to a level that I hadn't attained at the time. Who knows what would've happened if he hadn't given me that piece of advice."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Out of Character with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.