Kevin Owens on He Did Four Week Process To Get Cleared In Nine Days For His WWE In-Ring Return at SummerSlam 2026

As noted before, WWE’s SummerSlam 2026 Night 2 event in Minneapolis, Minnesota earlier this month featured Kevin Owens making a surprise in-ring return to WWE for the first time since February of 2025 due to a neck injury and surgery.

FACES Magazine held a recent interview with Kevin Owens. One of the topics discussed included Owens’ thoughts about the process that led to him getting medically cleared in time for SummerSlam 2026.

“Yeah, everything was so quick. That’s the craziest part. By the time they told me I could get back in the ring, that was mid-July. I cut my vacation short to get back in the ring as soon as I could. There’s a process to get medically cleared, and the longer you’ve been out, the longer that process is, depending on the injury, the surgery and all of that stuff.

Somehow, again, this is one of these cases where I’m kind of driving everybody nuts, and I kept asking how long until I’m cleared, how can I fast track it, what I can do to make it as soon as possible, this and that, and they were like well, there’s no shortcuts here. If this needs to happen, then it needs to happen. Usually, it takes about four weeks to get all of this done, I did it in nine days.

I basically took everything they wanted me to do, and instead of doing one thing one day, one thing the next day, one thing a few days later, I just did everything back-to-back-to-back. And, at the end of that they’re like ‘alright, you’re cleared.’

Then I got the call about SummerSlam, and everything happened so quickly between the time I was told I can get back in the ring, and the time I was at SummerSlam, there was maybe two weeks.”