Kevin Owens is still marveling that he was able to lure “Stone Cold” Steve Austin out of retirement.

Owens is teaming with John Cena, his first ever opponent on WWE’s main roster, against his decades-long frenemy Sami Zayn and Roman Reigns on the final SmackDown of 2022 on Friday night on Fox. He spoke to The Post about coming full circle with Cena, his long arc with Zayn and what the Austin match at WrestleMania 38 meant to him.

As we start to head to the Royal Rumble and into WrestleMania season, Owens reflected on how much gratitude he has over his match with Austin at WWE’s biggest event earlier this year.

“I still don’t have a full grasp on how that happened,” Owens said. “All I know is I was told by several people, from Steve to Vince McMahon to Bruce Prichard, it couldn’t have been anybody other than you — meaning me — with Steve. I’m not sure who suggested it, who asked for it or how it came about. One day I’ll find out. But the point is that it’s extremely flattering to me that those three all thought I was the best choice. There’s really no higher compliment than that for me.”

It was not only that Owens succeeded in landing Austin’s first match in 19 years; it was that it surpassed all reasonable expectations. Owens has been a WWE world champion, but the Austin match was arguably his most significant moment in the business.

“It doesn’t get any better than that,” Owens said. “I said it the day after the match: It’s all downhill from here.”

One of the several subplots of the tag match Owens has Friday on SmackDown is his perpetual story arc with Zayn. The two have been grappling as friends or foes in storyline for more than two decades, previously wrestling under the names Kevin Steen and El Generico all over the planet. Zayn, who kicked Owens in the family jewels to help Reigns’ Bloodline faction win the WarGames main event of Survivor Series, is currently riding a surreal wave in a highly entertaining storyline that is front-and-center in WWE’s programming.

In spite of the recent on-screen betrayal, Owens is thrilled for his friend.

“He’s been an incredible performer for the 22 years I’ve known him and it’s great to see people finally taking notice of that and getting to appreciate that as much as they should,” Owens said. “He’s getting the credit he’s deserved for a long time. Our careers at this point, there’s no denying they’ll forever be linked and attached to one another. We’ll always come back to each other one way or the other, whether it’s fighting or teaming. It’s been a real thrill to see things develop for him.”

Asked to estimate how many times they’ve shared the ring together, Owens shouted out the MithGifs Twitter account.

“She’s an incredible fan, and she knows all of our careers,” Owens said. “She’s gone back and watched every single match that involves both of us that she could find from our independent career through WWE, and she writes these essays on her Substack about our careers that I couldn’t recommend more. I kind of call her a Sami and Kevin historian.”

The woman who runs the account has found 300-400 instances in which Zayn and Owens have been in the ring together — but he estimates it’s actually more than double that.

“I guarantee it’s not even close. It’s so much more. We’ve had so many shows in the backwoods of Quebec, or all over the world, that no website would have ever heard of,” Owens mused. “If I were to guess, I don’t think it would be exaggerating to say it’s definitely close to a thousand. We’ve been doing this for 20 years. It’s great.”

In Owens’ first match on the WWE main roster in 2015, he defeated Cena in a moment that signified he was meant to be taken very seriously. Years after the two feuded in the storyline, Owens cites Cena as a mentor.

“John and I kind of mended fences a long time ago,” Owens said. “We haven’t been on opposite sides of the ring for awhile. He’s been an incredible valuable person to talk to about WWE and wrestling in general for so long. Even when we were rivals, if you want to call it that, he was a great sounding board for ideas and anything I could do to get better as a performer. He was at the very top of the business for so long, I couldn’t have imagined not using that resource.”