It has been some time since Kevin Owens felt this fulfilled in WWE.

Owens stepped away in October to have double knee surgery, and did so feeling he wasn’t making the impact he hoped with the company. His personality lends him to always feeling he can do more. When asked about his role, Owens continually talked about making things “count” and “matter.”

Over the past month, since his pipe-bomb-like promo standing on the announce table bashing Shane McMahon, Owens has felt things changing. The outspoken, brash, stun-everyone version of Owens feels right and is hitting the right notes with the audience.

“For too long, this past year especially and maybe even before, I’ve just been trying to put my head down, not make too much noise and just try to be what I thought this company needed me to be,” Owens said in a phone interview ahead of putting his WWE career on the line against McMahon at SummerSlam in Toronto on Sunday (7 p.m., WWE Network). “And it turns out it probably needed me to be the complete opposite.”

Owens, who is from Quebec, said with his current persona, he no longer has to get the fan reaction needed for the show. Instead — finally getting a true babyface run with WWE — he gets to listen to the audience and deliver what they want in order to get the “maximum reaction.”

“This feels different than what I’ve done for a while now, and it feels rejuvenating and exciting, which is always what you want in wrestling and also, I’m having a pretty good time,” Owens said.

One of the biggest factors in Owens reestablishing himself since returning is using the Stunner. He asked for and was granted permission to use it by “Stone Cold” Steve Austin in 2016. He was feeling, even then, his Pop-up Powerbomb was losing its luster. Owens tested the waters with the Stunner before his injury and now it’s become his finisher — much to the audience’s delight.

“Every time I hit it, people are partying, and that’s what I’m looking for,” Owens said.

The audience’s connection with the iconic move, and sharing Owens’ on-screen discontent with McMahon taking television time and pay-per-view match opportunities away from full-time wrestlers, has made him the on-screen voice of WWE fans in a way. Their reaction to him challenging McMahon tells Owens that fans want to see “talented wrestlers having the best matches possible.”

“I don’t know, man, you read things online after [Raw and SmackDown] and people kind of agree with you,” Owens said. “You hear things in the locker room of people agreeing with you as well. And you are like, I guess I’m not crazy.”

He understands feuding with a McMahon and getting to deliver the Stunner to him is only going to heighten the comparisons with Austin. It’s one Owens, who counted Austin and Shawn Michaels as his favorite wrestlers growing up, will not make himself. He is, however, “more than happy” with other people doing it.

When asked about the importance of making the Stunner his own — as opposed to looking like an Austin impersonation — he said for now he almost doesn’t want to make it his own. That’s why he’s gone about delivering the Stunner the way Austin did, set up by a kick to the gut. That could change, but he is hesitant.

“Randy Orton’s RKO is very similar and the way he goes about it is … part of it is respect for Randy, I guess,” Owens said of Orton’s patented finisher, which can resemble the Stunner. “I don’t want to just do something that looks a lot like what he does. Not that I don’t think he would care, but that’s just me. And then as far as just establishing it and getting people used to, ‘Hey, that’s the guy that does the Stunner,’ you know, once I feel that people are used to it, maybe there are ways to kind of go into it differently or use it differently where it will be a little more my own. But for now I’m not worried about that.”

Owens added he would have “loved” to have done something with Austin at the recent Raw Reunion show, but said it “was never even discussed” because he was committed to a “SmackDown Live” house show that night and was not a Raw wild card. But he said he agreed with Austin’s comments to Sports Illustrated that it was best they didn’t interact so he doesn’t get labeled the next Stone Cold.

“It was cool to see people talking about the possibility of us being in the same ring together, but that really wasn’t what the Raw Reunion was about,” Owens said.

That show was technically the first day for new “SmackDown Live” executive director Eric Bischoff. Owens said he doesn’t “really know what their roles are” right now when asked what impact he hopes Bischoff and Raw executive director Paul Heyman can have. He did note that having them in the locker room can only help those who seek their help.

“I’ve talked to Paul at length about everything under the sun for a couple years now, and I’m sure I’ll develop, hopefully, the same kind of relationship with Eric because I certainly feel like I can learn from those guys,” Owens said.

Owens doesn’t believe he is getting any more creative freedom than the rest of the WWE roster is, calling it a team effort. But he said he’s too focused on what he’s doing to really notice.

“I just kind of take care of my own stuff and I work with who I work with,” he said.

One choice Owens did make was to black out his Twitter profile picture and background in response to the mass shooting in Texas. He was enjoying a rare golf outing last week with his dad, live-tweeting some funny happenings along the way, when he saw the news. Owens said he felt “darkness and sadness” in that moment.

“My first thing was to just black out everything and stop tweeting about this [golf] s–t because this is real life and this is just terrible, and then the next day [in Ohio] same thing,” Owens said. “I don’t know, it just kind of just reflected my first feelings at the time.”

WWE held a moment of silence for the victims on this week’s “Monday Night Raw,” and those sections of Owens’ Twitter account remain black as he gets back to the task of entertaining people.

He enters his SummerSlam match in a good place, feeling like what he’s doing is making a difference in WWE. On screen, Owens is the voice of the audience and he gets to pay homage to one of his favorite wrestlers in the process. He didn’t expect the reaction he’s received, but he’s enjoying every minute of it.

“I decided I wasn’t gonna sit by and wait for what I’m doing to matter,” Owens said. “I’m gonna make it matter and then I went about things a certain way. I didn’t really expect things to take a life of their own like they have, but I’m happy it did and I’m happy where we are now.”