Ryan Ryder of Main Event Radio passed along an interview with Kevin Owens talking about becoming the new WWE Universal Champion and critics like Jim Cornette and Vince Russo.
On becoming the new WWE Universal Champion:
“Feels pretty good. It’s pretty surreal to wait 21 years from the time you’re 11 years old to 32 [years old] to think about becoming WWE champion and it finally happened Monday night and it feels good for sure. There were moments during that 15 years where I wondered, not because I thought I wasn’t good enough to get here because I did… I wondered if some of the sacrifices and the way things have to be in order to make it to WWE if that was worth it all and now I could say with absolutely no doubts that it was all worth it. I have a lot of confidence in my abilities. I know that I will bring prestige to this championship and I want to make people back home proud of what I’ve achieved.”
On critics such as Jim Cornette and Vince Russo:
“Jim Cornette and I have never really seen eye-to-eye. Ultimately, he knew that I could make it if I wanted to but he just didn’t think I had the right attitude. But that’s just because the way he and I saw things differently. He’s been saying that he thinks that I must have changed the way I see things because now I have success and it must be because I changed things. But it’s not; now I just work with people who I agree with more. The people who I work with now have the same vision that I do of what professional wrestling should be and what it is now. Jim and I just didn’t share that vision. As far as Vince Russo is concerned, I don’t think he means a single word of what he says. I think he says all of it to get attention. I think he knows how good I am and that me being the champion is a great move, he’s just trying to rile people up.”