Kevin Owens Has Been Out Over a Year Since Neck Surgery — Here’s the WWE Landscape Awaiting His Return

Kevin Owens has not set foot inside a WWE ring since announcing on the April 4, 2025 edition of SmackDown that a serious neck injury would force him out of his scheduled WrestleMania 41 match against Randy Orton. More than a year later, the questions surrounding his return are growing louder — and the storyline threads left dangling are hard to ignore.

Owens made a brief appearance in the crowd for John Cena’s final match last December, but beyond that cameo, he has stayed off WWE television entirely while recovering from surgery. His absence is significant: before going down, KO was operating as one of the company’s most effective heels, having turned on longtime friend and tag partner Randy Orton and even piledriving “The Legend Killer” to sideline him for months. That feud never got its proper conclusion, with the WrestleMania 41 blowoff yanked away when Owens revealed his medical situation.

Orton isn’t the only unfinished business waiting for him. CM Punk’s 2023 return to WWE included teasers toward a potential match with Owens, and the two men are known to have real history from their independent circuit days — a dynamic that could fuel a compelling long-term program. Meanwhile, Sami Zayn, Owens’ most storied rival and occasional partner, has taken a notably darker turn of late, falling out with Cody Rhodes and inserting himself into the Undisputed WWE Championship picture. The Owens-Zayn saga has run for years, and Zayn’s current trajectory sets up natural entry points for KO upon his eventual return.

With over a year on the shelf under his belt, Owens would almost certainly receive a strong babyface reaction the moment he steps back through the curtain — a reception WWE brass will have to weigh against whatever creative direction they have planned. He played a babyface role from August 2022 through October 2024 before his heel turn, so the company has recent experience working him in either capacity.

No official timeline for Owens’ in-ring comeback has been confirmed, but the pieces are very much in place for his return to matter whenever it does happen.