Add as a preferred source on Google Kevin Owens returned to the ring at WWE SummerSlam, but he wasn’t cleared in time for one goal he’d been chasing for years.
On the SummerSlam post-show, Owens said he tried to get back in time to wrestle John Cena one more time. He wasn’t cleared to return until a few weeks before SummerSlam.
That wasn’t an idea that only came up during his recovery, either. Owens had wanted the match for years. In 2024, before Cena’s retirement tour even began, he said he wanted to face him on May 31, 2025, 10 years to the day after their first match.
“July 18, 2025 was my surgery. Six months after the surgery is the first scan. I started asking them to do a scan at three months because when I was 20 years old, I had ACL surgery, and most people take nine months to get back from that. It 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 like, ‘I’m gonna come back before John Cena retires so I can wrestle him one more time.’
“They humored me and did the scan, and they were like, ‘Yeah, not happening.’ They did another scan at four months because I wanted to come back in Montreal in January, and they’re like, ‘We can’t do it.’
“Then another scan at six months, which is when they were supposed to do it, and they were like, ‘It’s still not right.’ Then they were like, ‘We’re not doing a scan for another long while.’
“We did another one at nine months. It still wasn’t good. At that point, I was like, it might not… maybe it just won’t happen, you know what I mean?” Owens said.
Owens and Cena last shared a ring on the December 30, 2022 episode of SmackDown, teaming up to beat Roman Reigns and Sami Zayn.
Cena wrestled his final match on December 13, 2025, losing to Gunther at Saturday Night’s Main Event. Owens hadn’t been medically cleared yet, but he was in the building for Cena’s send-off.