During the latest episode of WWE After the Bell with Corey Graves, Kevin Owens joined the show to talk about his WrestleMania 38 match with Steve Austin, teased a potential matchup with actor Matthew McConaughey, and mentioned how happy he was to see his long-time friend Sami Zayn’s match with Johnny Knoxville.
Kevin Owens talked about how the former Universal champion Dolph Ziggler, whose negative attitude in WWE at times made him realize what he wouldn’t want to be. He said he’s happy to see Ziggler are his positive mindset now and moving down to NXT.
During the latest episode of WWE After the Bell, Kevin Owens talked about his WrestleMania 38 match with Steve Austin and teased a potential matchup with comedian McConaughey. He added that he was happy to see his long-time friend Sami Zayn face off against Johnny Knoxville at WrestleMania.
Kevin Owens spoke on Dolph Ziggler, his journey in WWE, and how he’s doing well by giving him advice as well as supporting him in NXT.
He’s a guy I respect a ton, and I don’t think I’ve ever told him this but he’s one of the guys that I would look at and be like, ‘I don’t want to be like Dolph, Owens said. In the sense that he’s so good and I would see him so frustrated because he’s so good and he feels like he should be doing more, and he was right. I remember thinking, man, I don’t want to be like that. This was when I was first [in WWE] in 2014-15, I was like, I don’t want to be like that, I want to come to work and I don’t want to be frustrated all the time.
But guess what, when you’re passionate and hungry and know you’re good, which is what he is, it’s inevitable. It’s going to happen to everybody. If you don’t go through that at one point, I’m not going to say you’re in the wrong business because that’s cliche and I don’t believe that, maybe you just have a different perspective, but the hunger to do more and to be able to contribute to the show as much as you think you should or could, that’s normal. But it’s important to eventually find that perspective to enjoy it because that’s my thing. I was like, man, Dolph never really seems to enjoy himself. And then that shifted, I’ve seen him now completely differently.
After losing the NXT Championship on RAW after WrestleMania 38, Dolph Ziggler stopped wrestling for almost a year. Kevin Owens continued to mention Ziggler about how great it’s been to see Dolph help out so much with NXT 2.0 since coming for one match.
When he went to do that NXT stuff, I remember I watched the first night that he cut that promo in NXT and I texted him. He and I don’t really text, we’re not friends that way,” Owens mentioned, “But I texted him to say that promo was unbelievable. It was a Dolph that I hadn’t seen in years. He was like, ‘yeah, it was really refreshing,’ he said the same but even before that, his whole attitude and energy shifted. He seems to be enjoying himself at work a ton more.