Kevin Owens has admitted that he didn’t want to be like Dolph Ziggler when he came to WWE.

WrestleMania Saturday’s main eventer, Owens, was a guest on a recent episode of WWE After The Bell with Corey Graves, where among several different topics - including his match with Stone Cold Steve Austin and a potential programme with actor Matthew McConaughey - he discussed the frustration he saw when looking at Dolph Ziggler.

Owens says that while he has a ton of respect for The Show-off, he could see how frustrated he was at points in his WWE career and confessed that he never wanted to feel the same when he arrived in WWE.

“He’s a guy I respect a ton, and I don’t think I’ve ever told him this but he’s one of the guys that I would look at and be like, ‘I don’t want to be like Dolph. In the sense that he’s so good and I would see him so frustrated because he’s so good and he feels like he should be doing more, and he was right. I remember thinking, man, I don’t want to be like that. This was when I was first [in WWE] in 2014-15, I was like, I don’t want to be like that, I want to come to work and I don’t want to be frustrated all the time.”

The 37-year-old, who signed with WWE in 2014, elaborated more on the subject by stating that anyone with passion in this industry is in danger of feeling dissatisfied because they are always looking to do more.

"But guess what, when you’re passionate and hungry and know you’re good, which is what he is, it’s inevitable. It’s going to happen to everybody. If you don’t go through that at one point, I’m not going to say you’re in the wrong business because that’s cliche and I don’t believe that, maybe you just have a different perspective, but the hunger to do more and to be able to contribute to the show as much as you think you should or could, that’s normal.

“But it’s important to eventually find that perspective to enjoy it because that’s my thing. I was like, man, Dolph never really seems to enjoy himself. And then that shifted, I’ve seen him now completely differently.”

The former Universal Champion also revealed that although he and Ziggler aren’t close friends, he reached out to the Dirty Dawg after he first appeared in NXT to praise him on his promo and attitude.

“When he went to do that NXT stuff, I remember I watched the first night that he cut that promo in NXT and I texted him. He and I don’t really text, we’re not friends that way. But I texted him to say that promo was unbelievable. It was a Dolph that I hadn’t seen in years. He was like, ‘yeah, it was really refreshing,’ he said the same but even before that, his whole attitude and energy shifted. He seems to be enjoying himself at work a ton more.”

Dolph went on to defeat Bron Breakker for the NXT Championship on a March episode of NXT 2.0 and would hold the title before dropping in back to Breakker on the Raw following WrestleMania.

Thanks to WrestlingInc for the transcription.