Kevin Owens has told a tale about wrestling a hat back when he was working on the independent scene.
Over the years, there have been many bizarre moments in wrestling featuring inanimate objects, from Perry Saturn falling in love with a mop in WWE, to Kota Ibushi’s infamous matches with a blow-up doll in DDT. Now, in an interview with Ryan Satin of Fox Sports, Owens has spoken about the time he started hitting moves on a fan’s hat in a match with current AEW star Chuck Taylor during their time with Pro Wrestling Guerilla.
The ‘Prizefighter’ said he and Taylor were trying to one-up each other, but Taylor missed the headwear with a standing moonsault.
“I started the match by dropping an elbow on the hat, then [Taylor] tried to one-up me by doing a standing moonsault on the hat, but he kind of missed it, by the way. But, I never busted his chops about it.”
The former WWE Universal Champion then took things up a level with a piledriver to the delight of the audience.
So, then, the logical response was to hit a piledriver on the hat. And we got a ‘This is Awesome’ chant from that.”
Following the reaction to the chant, Owens decided they couldn’t top the hat antics with an actual match, so decided to leave, but he had to return as he was competing in a tournament at the time.
“If it had just been a regular match on a regular card, once we got that chant from wrestling the hat, I would have been done. That would have been it. What’s the point?
“I think we were opening the show, too. I think we were first match. Imagine that’s how that started, and I would have just left and that would have been it. That’s how the show would have opened. Two guys hitting a hat.”
While interviewing Kevin Owens today, we briefly talked about this classic PWG moment. One of my favorite Reseda memories. pic.twitter.com/n09LNQW41H
— Ryan Satin (@ryansatin) February 10, 2021
While Owens hasn’t wrestled any clothing while in WWE, he still has fun with stationary objects, and elsewhere in the interview spoke of his intentions to jump off the pirate ship that will be part of the stage set-up for WrestleMania 37 in April. Before he gets there, however, he will need to survive his participation in the Elimination Chamber match to determine Roman Reigns’ next challenger later this month.