Sami Zayn (@samizayn) is a professional wrestler and the reigning WWE Champion. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Orlando, FL to discuss winning the WWE Championship twice after more than a decade in the company, being part of The Bloodline and becoming an Honorary Uce, the huge reaction to hitting Roman Reigns with a chair, the story behind the “not feeling very Ucey” line with Jey Uso, his WrestleMania 38 match against Johnny Knoxville, El Generico, the decades of history with Kevin Owens, and more!
When you hear that you’re a two-time WWE champion, how does that make you feel?
“It’s cool. Yeah, here’s the thing that’s funny about it because even at the start of this year, which was nine months ago, ten months ago now, whatever, I was wrestling Drew, and I didn’t win. I had kind of just battled with it and went, you know what, maybe the ship sailed. I was real close a couple of years ago with all the Bloodline stuff and all that, and even in the fallout of that. Then I was close, but if I lost after losing that match, I was like, well, you can’t tell this story again. Maybe it’ll happen in some different way, and it did happen in a bit of a different way. But the Cinderella story, underdog who finally wins the big one- we burnt that card; that card was done after losing to Drew because you can only tell that story so many times. You can get them on board once, twice, three times, and it wasn’t the right time. It wasn’t. I didn’t have the momentum that I had a year or two prior to that. But I had to kind of struggle to accept that maybe I just missed the window, slipped through the cracks, and it just won’t happen. I’ve said this before in other interviews, or to friends, or my wife, or whatever. I’ve had a tremendous career, and winning the world title at that point is just the cherry on top. It would be nice to have, but it’s not like if I never win it, it’s like I never [got it]. You know what I mean? You don’t live and die by these things. You kind of just got to look at the big picture.”
You become the champion for the first time in June; if you thought that window had closed, what changed?
“I don’t think anything changed, and that’s actually the point. It’s that I kept doing what I do, which is making sure that everything I’m involved in is as good as it could possibly be. Eventually, a lot has to happen, even when you’re doing good work and you’re great and all this stuff to win the WWE Championship. It is like there is no such thing as a fluke win. I know when I won it the first time and it was nine days, in character you could say I was a fluke. There’s no such thing as a fluke WWE title win. To even be in the periphery of it is insane. To even be in the mix, to even be in the discussion, to even have title matches, even if you’re losing them, is extremely one in a billion already to be put in that position. So to win it, there’s an immeasurable number of variables that are required to be in that position. So there’s no such thing as a fluke WWE title win.
So I just think kind of slow and steady wins the race. You keep doing good work, and then it’s timing, and that’s the thing that a lot of people don’t account for. There are so many variables that are out of your control. Of course, you control what you can control, but there’s so many variables that are just not yours to play with, and I think timing ended up being the deciding factor, obviously on the day of or whatever, right place, right time, right variables going into it, all that, but also like you have to work really, really hard and have this crazy level of consistency to constantly be even in the mix.”
Which title win do you think means more to you? Is it the first one because you finally got to the top of the mountain, even though you only held that one for nine days, or is it this reign now because there’s a little more substance to it?
“Well, I’d say the first win. That’s more special because the first is the first, right? But I’m really enjoying what I’m doing right now, and I know it’s only been maybe a month or I don’t even know how long it’s been, but I like this trajectory I’m on currently, and having some fun to tell some stories and have these challengers all waiting in the wings and get to do this like kind of character work. That’s been really rewarding. That’s really fun.”
Up to this point, what do you think was the peak of your career before becoming WWE Champion? What was that thing that you were so proud of?
“Probably Bloodline stuff. I think that’s probably what I’d be best remembered for if my career ended before I won the world title or whatever; it might still be what I’m most remembered for 20 years from now if people remember anything about me 20 years from now. But I was also just very proud of it. But I’ve had so many things throughout my career. I’m just giving you the answer of what I think would be best remembered, but also simultaneously something I’m extremely proud of, but there’s a ton of stuff in my career I’m extremely proud of.”
Also crazy to think about it on the surface level of you, this guy here is in the Bloodline.
“Well, that’s kind of what makes it work from the jump. That was in the conception of the idea; it’s so ridiculous, that’s part of the appeal of it. My intent in the beginning was more to be kind of like on the periphery, [but] it evolved, and that’s part of the beauty of it. When I say part of the skill set, part of why I loved it so much is the week-to-week adaptation. I had some ideas and I had an overarching blueprint, which more or less kind of came to fruition, which starts here and ends in a championship match eventually down the road with Roman. That’s kind of the blueprint in your head, but some of the week-to-week stuff that you don’t account for, those are just gifts that fall into your lap, and then it’s playing with those gifts, and that’s that adaptability and the improvisational skills and the storytelling skills that I think are really what we do, or a crucial part of what we do, or a crucial part of being really good at what we do, is adapting to those things when they come to you, whether it’s in a match or whether it’s in a storyline. It’s like, I know this was the plan, but hang on just a sec. Now we’ve got this thing with Jey, and you got to run with it because it’s interesting, and you hadn’t accounted for it ahead of time. But now you’ve got this gift that fell from the heavens, and running with it. Sometimes that happens in matches, and sometimes it happens in promos, or a lot of times, what’s happened to me, especially most recently with this WWE title thing, is it’s happened in kind of overarching storytelling, where yeah, I know this wasn’t where we were going, but hang on a sec. This is really interesting, and we should probably elaborate on this.
That’s what I mean about when you asked me earlier, what is it that I think was different? My answer was actually that it was more the fact that it was doing things the same. The same is just the mentality wherein you make whatever you’re doing so good, or stick out so much that the logical thing to do is to follow up on it next week. If you’re given the gift, if you have this little kernel of something, and it gets to be on television. You’ve got to invest everything you’ve got into it to make that kernel pop.”
Did you dream this big when you were a kid? Did you dream of being the WWE Champion?
“Not really. You know, it’s weird. I don’t even know how to answer this. I find it very hard to speak about myself in any sort of absolutes and say I’m this type of person. I think a lot of stuff is just like circumstance, but I’ll try to generalize and paint myself in a bit of a broader stroke here. I used to say I have ideas; I don’t have plans. I know I’d like to get there, so I kind of generally work towards something, and then it ends up being there. Then you end up getting there, but I don’t map it out. God, I don’t know how to answer that about the WWE Champion thing.”
Has anybody ever told you that you look a lot like El Generico?
“I’ve heard it. I’ve heard many comparisons with the ring work and the career parallels and all that stuff; there’s some overlap.”
But when you finally end up going to NXT, this is the first time that people are seeing you, really
“That was interesting. Yeah, that was very interesting. It was an interesting experience because I’d stayed hidden for so long, successfully, which in today’s world seems incomprehensible. This was during the internet, but still not to the level that it’s at today, obviously.”
Was there ever talk of you wrestling with a mask in NXT?
“I didn’t know when they signed me because I also knew, you know, well, you signed me for what you saw. So I’m assuming you liked what you saw, I don’t know what they wanted out of me. So there’s a lot to me, and there’s a lot of avenues you could take. So one was this masked type character. So I’ll clarify. Let me elaborate. But when they’re asking you to come up with names or whatever. I didn’t know what they wanted out of me, so I sort of had these categories, because again, I just didn’t know what they wanted out of me. I know I look like a redhead; I could look Irish or Sheamus’s cousin on TV if you wanted me to be Sheamus’s little cousin, I could be that. Maybe they want me for that. I’m also French Canadian. I’m also Arab, and there’s the Mexican stuff or the masked stuff. So I was presenting all these different categories of names, not just broad names.”
How did you become Sami Zayn?
“So I think what I did see as a huge opportunity is to kind of be myself. A huge part of that is obviously my ethnicity and my religion, I guess, to an extent. Just like it’s a big part of who I am. Not that it’s a day-to-day thing, but it’s a big part of the concoction that has made me who I am. To be able to represent that in a way that has never really been represented was very attractive to me. Because as an Arab, you have heightened awareness of it. Growing up in the 80s, 90s, and especially in a post 9/11 world where the stereotypes and the racism and all that stuff is just crazy, and it’s normalized and it’s accepted, and it was sort of like the only way you saw your people represented in Western culture. I was a child of the West. My household was Arab and Muslim, but for all intents and purposes, I look like just some white kid. So, the idea of kind of smashing that boundary a little bit of being an Arab and not playing the caricature, especially the heel caricature of an Arab.”
Like Muhammad Hassan?
“Yeah, who wasn’t actually Arab himself, ironically. But just not playing into those stereotypes, not even reintroducing, but introducing a concept of like, hey, Arabs are just normal people. What is this groundbreaking idea!? That was very attractive to me. So I was putting out names that were like Sami Zayn. Sami’s an Arab name. I was almost named Sami. My mom almost named me that, she didn’t, and Zayn is an Arab name, but both of them are extremely Western-passing. People could pronounce them. Doesn’t trip people up. But I wanted my ethnicity kind of to be represented in the name, without going full-blown Kareem Abdul Aziz or something like that and they’re like, what? Not so disconnected. So that’s kind of how that name ended up sticking.”
What is it about the chemistry that you and Kevin Owens have. Why do you make magic together?
“Well, it’s the word you just said. It’s chemistry, and it’s magic because it’s like there’s no equation yet that we have figured out for what’s going to make two people gel that way in the ring and outside the ring and all that stuff. It’s just magic.”
Your character’s in a really interesting position, because you’re doing heelish things, but your intention is always, I guess, I call them babyface positive, right? You get a lot of cheers, but you’re also getting some boos, so you’re blurring the line a lot. It’s very interesting.
“There’s a lot of evolution that’s happened, and part of what I’ve liked about this sort of turn is that it wasn’t done as a conventional turn. It wasn’t done, good guy, good guy, good guy. Now I’m bad. You know what I mean? It was just like a very gradual process. It all started when I lost to Drew at the Royal Rumble. I realized, well, as I said earlier, we’ve played this card, can’t play it again, so something needs to change now. I’d like it to be gradual, and I’d like it to just feel the audience, and I’d like to obviously nudge the audience in a certain direction, but I want to do it in this sort of delicate way, right? There were things that, again, unexpected gifts that fall from the sky, or just hands that you’re dealt that you don’t know are going to be dealt, that sometimes put us on a fast track one way, or took us in a different direction another way. So, for example, when I beat Carmelo Hayes for the title, it went from like 80-20 cheers, it went from like 90-10. I had 10 to work with in the beginning, and I’d like to get that number to like 70-30. Maybe 60-40.”
So 90% cheers?
“Yeah in January or whatever, just enough to hear one or two guys going boo! I’m like, okay, I can work with that, and I’ll just gently tip those scales. There was this fine balancing point that I wanted to get to, and I couldn’t get to it when I wanted to get to it because that’s just weekly television, and that’s the hand you’re dealt sometimes. A lot of it is just as I said, rolling with the punches, being in the pocket, being present, and dealing with it, and all that kind of stuff. But then when I beat Carmelo Hayes overnight, I was at like 70-30 at that point, and then it just went like 90-10 in the other way as soon as I beat him, and the stuff with Trick was all contributing to it at that time as well. But then when I beat Carmelo, it was like a light switch. So okay, that’s gonna accelerate the process a little bit. I didn’t want to take this character and go well, now I’m a bad guy, crumple it up and do something else. I really like evolving into things. If you look at the trajectory of the character, if you go back starting in 2019 maybe, each little chapter has kind of seamlessly bled into the next thing.”
At what point, when you’re putting together this on paper silly match with Johnny Knoxville, did you realize, oh, this is really going to be something special?
“Well, I kind of knew. So I’ll have these, this is gonna sound cocky for sure, but I’ll have these moments. Let’s say I’ve put something together and I’ve thought of it and I’ve reviewed it a bunch of times in my head, where I’m just like, oh my God, these people have no idea what’s about to hit them. Okay, I’m exaggerating. What I’m trying to say is, I’ll go, this is bulletproof, there’s no way this is not going to get them. But then there is self-doubt. So right up until the curtain, I would fluctuate between oh my god, even if you hate me, even if you hate wrestling, and you somehow got dragged to this show, this will get you. There’s no way around it.”
Did Johnny Knoxville have any wrestling experience before this?
“No. [He’s done stunts] Yeah, he’s not a wrestler. He’s not an athlete. But he’s a great man. He was perfect. I think he was just perfect. I mean, I hate him.”
You still hate him?
“It’s this gnawing thing that just doesn’t really go away. I don’t want to get into all that now, but he’s relentless. He really is. What I mean by he’s perfect is you can’t really replicate that match with [anyone else]. At that time, that match could only be Sami Zayn versus Johnny Knoxville. You couldn’t put two other people in there and have the same match. That’s kind of what I liked about it. Is like all the things that happened. It’s easy to watch it and reduce it to just oh there was a bunch of weapons and stuff, but in fact it was just a wrestling match, and those gadgets, that’s his signature offense, because his signature offense is from the Jackass world. He doesn’t have wrestling moves. He has Jackass stunts. So the moves were replaced by the Jackass stunts, but they still serve the same function.”
Was there a spot in that match that particularly hurt that maybe didn’t look like it should have? The bowling ball looked pretty bad!
“The table was crazy. That mousetrap table, that was a big one that really hurt. But that’s the one kind of sore spot because it almost gets reduced to a comedy match. Part of what I love about it is it had a little bit of everything. There are comedic elements, but there’s also some actual violence and some pretty serious bumps.”
Not long after that, it leads into the stuff with The Bloodline, which I feel like takes your career to just a whole new level. What does your career look like without the Bloodline story?
“No idea. I can’t even fathom it. I don’t know, because it just is. So I can’t play what-ifs or hypotheticals. I don’t even know how to answer that because everything is such a domino effect in this company and in life, but in this company, it’s almost impossible to say what would have happened if X or if Y, these variables. I’m not the only one with these stories, but tons of people will tell you if this one thing hadn’t happened, my entire career, my entire life would be different, and sometimes it’s super small things. Sometimes it’s things that have nothing to do with you. I’ve told this story before, but the biggest break I ever had in my career, minus Bloodline and WWE stuff, what got me booked in the United States to begin with had nothing to do with me. It was because another wrestler from Canada called Sexy Eddie went to the States, and I won’t get into the gory details here, but there are gory details because he got cut open and there was a bunch of blood and he was just an insane showman and he captured people’s imaginations in this one night where all of a sudden these people were like who are these Canadian guys? Because of that I got booked. So the biggest break in my career had nothing to do with me. It was because Sexy Eddie got cut open and had blood spewing out of his arm but still decided to put on a show. If he doesn’t put on that show, I don’t know how my career would have gone. Maybe I’d still be here. Maybe I’d still be in this chair. Maybe I’d be WWE Champion. Maybe I wouldn’t. I have no idea. But there’s such a crazy domino effect that takes place that you can’t even begin to get your head around.”
Do you feel like you should have won that night in Montreal?
“At the time, I thought there was a case to be made for it, but going back to the domino effect thing, I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t think it’s ludicrous to say I should have. If you were watching at that time, I think anybody could have made that argument. But it was just again timing, and Cody was also red hot at that time, and they were building to something. Then it leads to Cody the next year, and then it’s more gratifying. Whatever it is, just yeah, I don’t know. Could, should, would- would it have worked? I think so. But who’s to say?”
When you were working with the Bloodline week in and week out, was it your goal to get people to break? Was it your goal to get people to laugh? Because you were very good at it.
“No, I don’t really remember that it was a goal. After a few times, especially Jey. Jey had a problem where it’s like when you watch blooper reels, and then once they laugh once, they can’t stop. After I got Jey, I think a couple of times, then it became, oh no, this is just gonna keep happening, and I can’t stop it. But I think that is something that did contribute to the memorability of it because it is not something you’ve ever really seen. The fourth wall is kind of everything in wrestling, right? But that suspension of disbelief is the whole thing, but I do think there comes a line. I don’t think we ever came anywhere close to crossing that line.”
When you said the ‘Feeling Ucey’ line, it looks like Jey is fighting for his life. And then Roman takes a second to kind of like gather his thoughts.
“I think what also took it to a different level is when Jey kind of tries to hide, and Roman’s like, ‘no, no, no, no.’ Then it was over, then it was over. Again just a pro’s pro here. Understanding the energy in that room and the delivery to compound that effect was very, very well done, and probably is what cemented it. If it had just ended at the laugh and the whatever, it’s already a very memorable moment. But then the way Roman built up to it, like again, it’s music, right? ‘Ucey?’ That cemented it.”
After that WrestleMania match, how did you become part of this conversation of you being the guy to end Gunther’s Intercontinental streak?
“I don’t know how it came about. I truly don’t.”
A lot of people thought it was going to be Chad Gable, and Chad Gable came so close so many times.
“I don’t know how it kind of came about. I think the dominoes just fell in that way because I was actually, if you go back and watch, leading into even in November or something. I think I remember I was doing promos with Drew McIntyre about how I’d never beaten him, and how I’ll be world champion, and I’ll show you. Then somehow, I don’t know how. That was one of those [times when] the dominoes fell in that direction. But I mean, again, it all kind of worked out, I think, in the end, because even Chad is in a better position now than he’s ever been right at this moment. I’m in a better position than I ever have been. So I think in a weird roundabout way, and sometimes you can’t really [anticipate it]. It’s come up a few times now as we’re talking about the domino effect that you can’t really predict. But then 10 years removed, or from a different overhead point of view, and you’re like, well, actually, this is kind of the starting point.”
I want to ask you a question I’ve always been curious about. When you answered John Cena’s open challenge for the United States Championship and you dislocated your shoulder, what level of pain were you in during that match?
“I don’t know, nominal, because I kind of couldn’t focus on it. I had other things to do. I had a different task at hand. Your body has this amazing ability to kind of compartmentalize things. You know what I mean? It kind of hit more after the fact. The adrenaline was running high. It actually dislocated twice. The first time it subluxed, which is popping out and popping back in, happened so fast that I almost wasn’t sure it happened.”
So that was going into the ring.
“Yeah, that’s the one that happens on the stairs, out and in so fast that I was actually confused. Did I imagine that? Am I okay? What just happened? What was that pop? But it was moving and it was fine. I just didn’t know what happened. But then maybe two, three minutes into the match, he gives me a back suplex, and then it goes out and it doesn’t really come back in. I remember the doctor going like, ‘You good? What do you want to do?’ I’m like, ‘Well yeah, just stick around, stand by, because I don’t know what’ll happen, but I got a job to do.’ So I couldn’t really focus on it. But that was a really special night too.”
Walk me through this moment during the introduction where you tell ring announcer Mark Nash, ‘No, no, no, I don’t care if I’m the champion. You’re introducing me first.’
“Yeah, I think that got misinterpreted slightly in the phrasing. Chicago did not like it. That was the first night I got really booed, like significantly booed before I started tipping the scales a little bit. I was doing it as a thing of like, no, I know exactly what you said. I know I’m the champion, but out of respect, please introduce him last. Then the way Mark said it, I’m not sure they understood the meaning behind it, so they just booed anyway. But it’s all good. I don’t want to be announced after, nothing should go after him at that point. You know what I mean? Yeah, John’s the man too.”
Do you have a number in mind of I want to wrestle until I’m this age?
“Not only do I not know the answer to that. The other thing that I think about a lot is I don’t really know what I want to do when I’m done, because there are times I’m like, you know what sounds so nice? Just taking care of a garden, just like really slowing down the pace of life and kicking my iPhone into a lake and just really slowing down and living the way humans are meant to live. But also the problem is, it’s in my blood. This has been my life. So after a month, I might start climbing the walls, and it’s like, no, I need to be behind the wheel. I need to be doing three-hour drives. I need to be getting on planes, maybe I need to be performing in some capacity because it’s what I’ve done.”
What was your last job before wrestling?
“I worked in an office very briefly. Before that, I worked at a grocery store. I loved that job. In fact, for a long time, I still fantasized about going back to work, even though I was doing fine for money, to just go work three hours a week at a grocery store, bagging groceries or something like that. So this is also kind of funny, but a dream I’ve always had is being a cab driver. And then Uber came around. I’m like, man, I should do Uber sometime.”
You mean the WWE Champion driving people around in an Uber?
“But this is humiliating to say, but I actually just bought a new car for the first time like a week ago. But up until that, my car is a 2004 Altima that I’ve had since 2011, and I’m like, it’s so funny that I’m this WWE superstar, but my secret fantasy is to be a cab driver, an Uber driver, but my car is too sh*t to even pass Uber’s standards to allow me to do this job. I think it’s because I don’t look at these jobs as a means to an end, a financial end. I’m not looking at them as a means to a financial end. They’re just things that interest me because of the experience of sharing. So if you’re a cab driver, someone gets in the car, ‘All right, where are you heading?’ ‘Why are you going to the airport?’ Like chit-chat.”
What is Sami Zayn grateful for?
“Having this chat, to be doing this, and for my family at home.”
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