Kevin Owens has said that Matt Riddle had amazing opportunities in WWE and managed to “screw it all up”.
Owens was responding to a question from Robbie Fox on the My Mom’s Basement podcast.
The bulk of the show was taken up by discussion of Owens’ neck injury, which has ruled him out of WrestleMania. Owens requires surgery and confirmed he is to see a surgeon on Monday about the way forward.
Later in the interview, Fox asked Owens about the comments that Matt Riddle made in March. Talking about his hardest opponents, Riddle said:
Hardest opponent? Hardest opponent in the ring? I would have to say Sheamus. Sheamus, easy to work with, hits really hard. So hardest in the ring. But, then when I think about who’s harder to maybe work with, I would have to say Sami Zayn or Kevin Owens… It’s hard to put a complete sentence together with those guys if you know what I’m saying… Very difficult.
When asked by Fox whether he had seen the comments, Owens laughed and replied:
I did see it. It’s funny because, coming from him, I have nothing against him at all but, to me, he’s a guy who had really amazing opportunities handed to him, like being Randy’s tag team partner for so long and basically getting to ride the coattails of a legend, and he managed to screw it all up. Not because of his abilities, because he’s very talented and very athletic, but because of his own attitude and poor choices.
For him to say we’re hard to work with or whatever it is — he couldn’t get a word in — there is a pretty good reason for that. You look at his track record and you look at our track record, I think that speaks for itself.
He added:
If that’s how he felt, it’s fine. I can’t say he’s wrong when he said it was hard to get a word in. It probably was because we probably didn’t let him get a word in too much just because we’ve been around him and we work a certain way, and it works.
