Kevin Owens on When He Found Out He’d Be at NXT Takeover, Being Surprised It Didn’t Leak

– On the latest episode of WWE’s After the Bell, Kevin Owens discussed his appearance at NXT Takeover: WarGames and when he found out about it. Owens was the surprise member of Team Ciampa after Johnny Gargano was unable to appear due to a neck injury.

Highlights from the discussion, and the full podcast, are below:

On when he found out he was going to be in the Takeover match: “Well, so the first thing — I mean, it’s been a constant throughout the last few years where any time I hear of anybody at NXT getting injured, or for some reason not being able to make a show. Whether it’s a storyline or not, I always send Triple H the same text, which is ‘Hey, if you need somebody I’m here, hahahaha.’ And you know, we always have that kind of little insider joke. So the same thing happened when I heard Gargano was off Takeover. I immediately texted him, saying, ‘I hear Johnny’s out, I’m available.’ And then this time, the answer was, ‘Well, that’s actually a possibility, I’m looking into it.’ I was like, ‘Oh, s**t. All right.’ And then he called me in the middle of my Europe tour a couple weeks ago, and let me know that it was gonna happen.”

On keeping the appearance secret: “I guess I was sitting on it for about a week in a half, we didn’t tell anybody. I’m astonished it didn’t get out. Especially because that day, we didn’t take any precautions to try to keep it secret. I was just walking around with the guys and I was just there, like I was just another NXT guy. So the fact that it didn’t somehow leak that I was gonna be in the match was a nice surprise.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit WWE’s After the Bell with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.