Owens has also won championships in other promotions such as IWS in Canada and All American Wrestling (AAW).
Kevin Steen was born in 1984 and grew up in Marieville, Québec, Canada. He was trained by Terry Taylor as his primary trainer as well as a few other people like Jacques Rougeau. He made his professional wrestling debut in 2000 on his 16th birthday. Kevin’s first language was French, and the way he learned English was by mimicking everything he heard on Monday Night Raw. He was inspired by the WrestleMania XI match between Shawn Michaels and Diesel for the WWF (at the time) Championship, and that is what finally caused the epiphany in his mind and the realization of “I want to do this for a living.” This is the story according to Kevin.
Steen wrestled for Jacques Rougeau’s wrestling promotion for the first several years of his career until he started to get his career off the ground. When he (sort of) graduated from his trainer’s promotion, he signed with IWS (International Wrestling Syndicate) based out of Montréal in 2003 and stayed there until 2009, establishing his footing within the industry. There were also stints in Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW) from 2004 – 2006, 2008, and 2014.
Kevin Steen achieved most of his success in wrestling pre-WWE in Ring of Honor (ROH) from 2007 – 2014 and in Pro Wrestling Guerilla (PWG, Excalibur of AEW is one of the founders). He held the ROH World Championship for the better part of 2012 as well as held the ROH World Tag Team Championship on one occasion throughout his seven-year tenure with the company. Steen has held the PWG world championship a record three times as well as the PWG World Tag Team Championship three times. Based on these metrics, Kevin experienced more success in PWG across two separate stints from 2005 – 2008 and 2010 – 2014.
For his entire career until signing with WWE in 2014, he wrestled under his biological name – Kevin Steen – before changing the name to Kevin Owens for WWE. His son was named Owen after the late Owen Hart. Owens has experienced great success in WWE as a former NXT Champion in 2015, a former Universal Champion in 2016 – 17, a two-time Intercontinental Champion as well as a three-time United States Champion. Kevin’s most prominent WWE storyline came in 2016 – 17 when he was Universal Champion, but more importantly than that the storyline with Chris Jericho and their friendship caught fire.
“The List” became the most talked about phenomenon in the company, as Jericho appeared on ESPN and was asked about it constantly. Owens told a deeper story that resonated with the WWE universe again in 2020 leading to WrestleMania with Seth Rollins by incorporating each man’s history in the WWE Performance Center. The Messiah does not have a whole lot because he got started in WWE for the most part before the PC was built in 2013 as he debuted on the main roster in 2012.
The WWE universe is aware that Kevin Owens is not afraid of heights and he has no second thought when it comes to jumping off any surface no matter how high. The most recent example of this was at Royal Rumble 2021 in which he jumped off a forklift onto Roman Reigns. Another example occurred at WrestleMania 36 when he jumped off the WrestleMania sign onto Seth through the announce table.
Kevin was thinking about jumping off the pirate ship at Raymond James Stadium when he heard Mania would take place there last year, but it got moved to the WWE Performance Center. Now that WrestleMania 37 is set to emanate from the stadium in 2021, Owens will have the opportunity to make good on his promise by jumping off the pirate ship in the venue.