Sami Zayn reflected on his recent trip to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and the speculation regarding his absence from previous shows in the country.
Zayn was a guest on After the Bell with Corey Graves and spoke about his appearance at Night of Champions, which is the first Saudi Arabia card he has appeared at since WWE announced a ten-year deal with the country in 2018: (Transcription courtesy: WrestlingNews.co)
It was a really, really, really kind of a heavy trip, to be honest. There was a lot that went into it. First of all, the fact that I haven’t been there in a few years, and that there’s been so much speculation as to why I’m not going and what’s the political reasoning, this and that. I won’t get into all of it, but I’ll tell you 99.9% of what you’ve read online about this subject, completely fabricated, people assuming things and then running with those assumptions and adding on to them. It’s wild. I think it’s anytime they can’t get a concrete answer, that’s kind of what tends to happen. I think that’s like human nature, almost.
It’s been years since I’ve been back to the Middle East. I think the last time I was there was 20, maybe 16, in Dubai, possibly, so it’s been a little while. Of course, as you saw on the Premium Live Event, all this to say, I’m Arabic, I’m Muslim, all this stuff, and that’s like my part of the world. I understand those people. Those are my people. When I went there, I got to go to Mecca, which was just a surreal experience. I also saw my uncles that I hadn’t seen in 25 years. I have cousins that I haven’t seen in 25 years. I met my great uncle that I didn’t even know existed. So it was pretty heavy in a lot of ways. It had a lot of weight.
WrestlingNews.co posted the transcript of the above answer, which appears to have been edited off the After the Bell interview when we listened back. The edited answer goes from “First of all, the fact that I haven’t been there in a few years” and picks up in the second paragraph with “I think the last time I was there was 20, maybe 16, in Dubai, possibly, so it’s been a little while.”
David Bixenspan of Wrestling Inc. reached out to WWE and Spotify regarding the edit and has not received a response yet.
It is worth adding that WWE issued a statement in 2018 to Pro Wrestling Sheet regarding Zayn’s absence from the shows in Saudi Arabia:
WWE is committed to embracing individuals from all backgrounds while respecting local customs and cultural differences around the world.
Zayn also spoke about his lack of presence on the Saudi Arabia cards during an interview in 2020 with The Blindboy Podcast:
I don’t know. I don’t know the specifics on this. To this day I didn’t really ask because I wasn’t really keen on going anyway. But WWE did a thing, a partnership sort of or signed some sort of deal to put on these shows in Saudi Arabia for I don’t know, what? Ten years or something like that, and I just wasn’t invited to go and I never really dug into it too much because I wasn’t keen on going to begin with, but I would like to discuss that for a moment because there is a certain amount… there’s a certain amount of… what’s the word I’m looking for here? You know, it became very popular, very easy to say, ‘Well you shouldn’t go to this country because they do these awful things’ and I understand it and I agree and if I was asked to perform in Israel, I wouldn’t, right? But at the same time, I perform in the United States, you know what I mean? And I live in the United States. So there’s that sort of dissonance to get your head around a little bit. So I don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel about all of that.
Prior to WWE’s ten-year deal with the General Entertainment Authority of Saudi Arabia, the company ran a live event in Riyadh in April 2014. Sami Zayn did wrestle at that event.
Zayn was absent from the beginning of the 2018 shows including the Greatest Royal Rumble card that kicked off the deal in April of that year. Kevin Owens wrestled on the Greatest Royal Rumble but did not appear on any future cards in the country until Night of Champions last weekend.
Zayn & Owens defeated Roman Reigns & Solo Sikoa in the main event of Saturday’s premium live event.
