Kevin Owens has said that he and Sami Zayn are “nowhere near” living up to the Usos’ WWE Tag Team Championship reign.
He and Zayn also agreed that either Jimmy or Jey should be the person to finally dethrone Roman Reigns.
In an interview with Alex McCarthy for Inside the Ropes, Owens and Zayn touched on several topics.
Zayn spoke about how special it was to hold the Tag Titles with Owens:
Given the history with he and I, I think it’s obviously doubly or triply, quadruply special when you take into account the factors that got us here, or how we got these at WrestleMania in the main event together with one another.
As everyone knows, we started out together 20 years ago. So when you factor all that in, it’s almost like a storybook-type thing. So, I think it’s bigger than just winning the Tag Team Championships. I think — and people recognize it — that’s what’s making this particular Tag Team Championship reign special to the audience. They know the backstory; they know how and why winning these was so special for us.
When asked what the pair wanted to achieve with their title run, Owens replied:
One of the things that I was concerned about before winning them was that, when we did get them, I wanted to live up to the Usos’ title reign because, man, they did a lot for these titles. They worked very hard to get them to the point where they could main-event WrestleMania. A lot of credit goes to them for that, so honestly I don’t feel like we’ve really so far in our run — I don’t think we’re anywhere near that.
I really want to work very hard to once we’re all said and done with these titles, and somebody else takes them from us, I want the run to be talked about in the same vein as the Usos, so that’s a challenge in itself because, man, they did really incredible.
Now, finally, they’re getting their flowers but they’ve been, in my opinion, underappreciated for a long time so that was a big concern to me. I want to live up to the work they’ve done and we’re obviously working our hearts out to try to make sure that happens. So, I guess that’s the one concern for us and part of it is just to make sure these titles stay at the forefront of the stories and keep being as important as they’ve been the last few months.
Elsewhere in the interview, Zayn spoke about how special it was for him to appear at Night of Champions in Saudi Arabia:
That was a pretty big deal for me for a number of reasons. That whole trip was really, really, really remarkable.
I guess on some level, even as a child, being an Arab or Muslim growing up and never really seeing a positive representation of that in media or whatever, I always just assumed that, if I ever got to WWE, I’d have to play like a terrorist or something like that. I don’t know if you can use that, but you know what I’m saying. That was just the perception and that was the portrayal of Arabs and Muslims on television. Never mind WWE, just in the media.
For that to converge with this wonderful story that I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of for the last year [and] converge with this moment of me being able to come before my people, or whatever you want to call it, but to be there and to have that sort of return under those circumstances was very, very special.
On who should eventually dethrone Roman Reigns, the Tag Champions once again referred to the Usos. Kevin Owens commented:
Either Jey or Jimmy. I think both those guys deserve the world and both those guys would be fantastic Universal World Champions — whatever you want to call that title now, I forget.
I think they’d be a shoo-in for that spot. They’d do great at it and, honestly, with the way everything’s progressed and the new heights they’ve reached, it certainly wouldn’t look out of place, so I think that would be a great idea for sure.
Zayn agreed:
Yeah, I think from a character and a story perspective it does make sense to see Jimmy or Jey do it at this point. I think a lot of characters have kind of come along throughout the last three years that could have been a very fitting ending.
There were a few. I was one, I think Cody was one, I think even Drew to a certain extent, maybe not totally because of the broader story. But it does seem at this point after everything else that Jimmy or Jey would be the most fitting for the story.
