At ROH Final Battle earlier this month, AEW and Impact Wrestling sent in videos to thank Ring of Honor. WWE was the only company that didn’t send any video for the event. Kevin Owens recently explained the reason behind this, because apparently ROH didn’t ask anyone from the company.
Stars like Samoa Joe, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Damian Priest, and so many more have history in ROH. The Final Battle pay-per-view included tributes from many AEW stars and people from other companies, but no WWE talent was on the broadcast.
WWE didn’t contribute to ROH Final Battle despite the promotion featuring several past ROH stars. Owens made a guest appearance on the French Canadian podcast Les anti-pods de la lutte. Speaking with Pat Laprade on that episode, Owens claimed that ROH never approached any wrestlers or WWE about sending in videos.
“The answer is quite simple: Ring of Honor didn’t ask any wrestlers from WWE to do that, nor contacted anyone at WWE. I knew it was going to be their last show, but I didn’t think to send a video so they could play it at the show. I’ve watched it. I was at a WWE show, and I was watching it on my phone, so it was not something I simply ignored. I’ve read some people on the Internet saying that probably WWE didn’t let us do it, but that’s incorrect. It’s just ROH who didn’t ask us, and I bet that if they had, we could have done it, but that wasn’t the case.”
Kevin Owens wrestled in Ring of Honor from 2007 to 2014. He wrestled there under his real name Kevin Steen. He is a one time ROH World Championship winner and one time ROH World Tag Team Championships winner with El Generico aka Sami Zayn.
Kevin Owens stated that he had many good memories with ROH and was happy to be a part of the promotion. He believes that he would’ve never made it to WWE if it wasn’t for ROH. It was hence a big influence and a huge part of his professional wrestling career.
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