Preview I was Intercontinental Champion I was US champion I was Universal champion and I was never [Music] happy what's up everyone Shaquille M Intro Judy here for CBS Sports and you know who this is he is the former WWE Universal Champion fighting Cody rhods for the Undisputed WWE title at Bas in Berlin never before has someone so efficiently punch two people in the face with a single blow Kevin Owens how's it going my man good how are you man I'm doing well thank you for doing this peel back the curtain we've been talking for 10 minutes but I like that we're rolling with the budges here um hey I I know Sami Zayn is UNRELIABLE we're a little tight on time but I I need to ask my dumb question off the top you know Kevin Owens Kevin Steen not always uh the most reliable friend I would like very quickly your Mount Rushmore of unreliable pro wrestling friends you can or can't include yourself whatever you like oh um I don't even know how to answer that seems like four is a lot to to come up with you give me two it's fine you give me you just give me the top one here's the thing I'll tell you this he's made in theory he's never really turned on me per se but outside the ring Sami Zayn is one of the least reliable people ever for anything um you can't you know you text him he gets back to you three days later you need a ride somewhere he'll get back to you you know when I needed Yeah well yeah I have to go to the airport but that was two days ago thanks buddy stuff like you know what I mean like uh so yeah he might not have stabbed me in the back per say I'm wrestling television but uh not that he ever stabbed in back in real life either but you want you use the word reliable most unreliable of all time Sami Z many can concur in his defense when he thought you were about to have a fist fight in an airport when you're really just trying to meet stost he was ready he was ready to roll that's true but he was already there let's say I was waiting for him to come have the F the fist fight he would have shown up two hours later and just found my beaten up body and go oh no I was late huh like that's the kind of yeah if he if he wasn't right there at the time no way he would have been reliable but that is a fair counter point it was Helping Cody Rhodes meet the Young Bucks also uh 19 years ago now so yeah you know I know one of the sort of prevailing narratives in this upcoming match with Cody is like did ke does Kevin Owens deserve this title shot Cody rhods is in a sense sort of gifting it and we're talking about the context of the bloodline but I I couldn't help but be reminded about a story Cody told when he originally left the WWE about how it was you who put him in touch with the Young Bucks and sort of set him on this path and I I don't think you would take credit for that but I think it's fair to say you were a early Catalyst for the road that eventually LED Cody here when you think about that like how does it feel to be now going on one-on-one against a guy who you did support in a time where he was at a Crossroads in his career no pun intended and you're doing it at the first ever German plle for the WWE I mean it's just great to be able to experience that with my friend you know in any in any way anytime I get to wrestle a close friend on a big show it's it's great um but yeah uh you know Cody left 2016 I think and it sucked sucked to lose my friend at the time so I really wanted him to have the best possible uh introduction to the independence scene because he had never been around he had never done that you know at the time you hadd already been in the WWE system for so long um and the independent scene is a whole different ball game from what WWE so I just you know guided him in the right direction and put him in touch with with with the young buck why he would uh would take care of them and I knew they'd hit it off you know and they did I was right um and that just helped them get the right uh I don't know the right platform I guess and everything else he did he knew he knew what he was capable of and he really wanted to show people in WWE promoters just what he already saw in himself and he succeeded uh you know that's an understatement so it's great to see him uh get all his flowers if you want to say that and to see him in the position he's in now and U yeah being in the ring with him in Germany I'm sure the German crowd is going to be wild first plle uh sure it'll be very memorable experience Why Kevin Owens was so unhappy as universal champion I remember uh an interview that you gave maybe last year where you talked about how winning titles and headlining WrestleMania are not quite the priority that they used to be and they've kind of been replaced by this desire to have fun and make memories for you and the fans do you remember a moment or an incident that helped kind of switch that flick from flick that switch about where your priorities lied well I can't say it's not a priority because it's still something everyone wants to do and I still want to and you know it's still a conversation I have every year when WrestleMania comes around hey what are we doing at WrestleMania this and that you know I have this idea for this this idea for that my ideas are rarely let me open the show you know or let me be the host and stuff like that like I you know um I guess it's just a natural uh it's natural to want to be on WrestleMania in the biggest you know way possible and you know winning titles is it's still an Accolade that's incredibly flattering incredibly deser rewarding you know but I think what helped me be less um obsessed I guess by that aspect of it is from 2015 to 2018 2019 that's all I could think about and you know that was when I was Champion all the time I was Intercontinental Champion I was US champion I was Universal champion and I was never happy never happy I always wanted to do more I wanted the next week to be bigger I'd finish a match and think okay what's next week now and you know the people I'd speak to were like I don't know we don't know what's next week we'll figure it out like and you know what I mean and I just I really didn't enjoy any of it as much as I should have and then I went away and had double knee surgery in 2018 I spent five months at home away from it and I think that really helped me put things in perspective uh I really needed to be to get that time away because at that time I've been on the road for four years with WWE and it's like a train you know you get on and you just don't get off you don't realize how quickly time passes um and I you know when I went away I talked to a lot of people about how it was really hard for me to shut it off and just not be consumed by wrestling all the time I actually remember one of the very useful talks I had was with Shawn Michaels I called him out of the blue and he was kind enough to listen to me and uh he just kind of helped me you know just he he told me in a lot of ways for throughout his career he was a lot like me always obsessed with what's next not enjoying the ride just hearing it from somebody I looked up to so much just kind of helped me uh let go of that and since then I'll still have myom moments where I'm you know uh I get swept up then I I'm but I'm able to pull back go like hey this is pretty incredible like maybe it's not perfect or maybe it's not the way you think it should be sometimes but come on and uh that's been very helpful and since then since that change of perspective I've been in the room with Stone Cold I've I've won the tag titles at WrestleMania with my best friend uh allegedly uh so you know it's uh it's worked out it's worked out all right I've been I was in the ring at WrestleMania this year with Brandy Orton just mind-blowing stuff [Music] [Music]