Kevin Owens Discusses Getting Hired by WWE, Al Snow Trashing ROH, Being Scouted by William Regal, and More

– WWE NXT champion Kevin Owens recently appeared as a guest for Chris Jericho’s Talk is Jericho podcast. You can read some highlights from the interview below.

On when Owens was hired by the WWE: “I was told on May 12th of last year that I was officially being hired. Then I had to go through the physical and that entire process. And then I signed the contract and moved to Florida on August 10th. I moved here from Montreal, and that whole process was crazy. I came here for a week in July, because I knew I was going to get hired, I came to see an NXT TV taping.”

Owens on William Regal scouting him for WWE at a PWG match in 2013: “I had always wanted to be here, but I never had any contact with [WWE]. My first match was on my 16th birthday in 2000, but I never had any contact at all with WWE until I saw William Regal at a PWG show out in California. … I knew a week before that Regal was coming to scout. So in my head I was like, ‘this is probably the one chance I’m going to have to make it there.’ They had already signed Sami Zayn, and I felt like things were kinda changing; maybe the outlook on who to sign.”

Owens on how he heard about how Al Snow reacting poorly in the crowd for one of his ROH performances: “Al Snow came to a show. At that point he worked for TNA. And he watched the whole show, but he was in the crowd, and afterwards I heard that, among the fans that had paid their ticket to see the show, he put down every single match. They could hear him saying ‘they’re not doing this right, why are they doing this, this makes no sense, this and that…’ But every match had the crowd rocking. It was a Ring of Honor show, and every fan left satisfied.”

Owens on his reaction to doing a tryout for WWE despite his reputation on the indy scene: “I had no problem with it. Even though I’d shown enough to William Regal, that he would be willing to try to get me in for a try-out, I’m still not that typical guy. I do have something to prove. I was more than happy to do that.”