Zayn opens up about the discussion.
After Sami Zayn emerged victorious from a Gauntlet match to secure a shot at GUNTHER’s WWE Intercontinental Championship at WrestleMania 40, Booker T stated on his Hall of Fame Podcast that he caught up with Zayn while they were on a flight and discussed the match and reaction to it.
Booker stated that Zayn was upset about the online reaction to him getting the victory over Chad Gable in the final stretch of the Gauntlet.
While speaking to Josh Martinez, Zayn clarified the discussion between himself and Booker and added that it was weird to see the story online.
Well I was a little surprised to read that (Zayn laughed), because I basically bumped into Booker (T) on the plane and we were sitting next to each other so, we were just talking so it was pretty weird to see it on the internet. But, all this to say, no, I was very happy with the performance because he was talking about the performance itself, the match itself and I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, I was very pleased with the match. It’s just unfortunate that it felt like the reaction to the win itself was a little split if not a little more skewed towards Chad even because we did such a great job of building Chad and he’s done a great job of building himself…’ When you’re a good guy or whatever or a bad guy and you know where you’re headed, you just want the full investment, you want the full scope of audience emotional investment and I felt like this was an interesting story because it split the emotional investment in two. So you’re only getting 50 percent of the pie, right? So that’s just an interesting dynamic. It certainly — and it is interesting because it makes it more compelling. But for sure, as a guy whose job is to rally the entire audience behind him which is what I feel like my job sometimes is as a good guy, I was a little let down that I felt like I couldn’t get the entire audience to rally behind me — at least, that’s not even entirely true. During the match itself, it feels like they’re very happy and invested in the whole thing, but the online backlash or the day after just with people feeling a little disappointed for Chad, which is very understandable, just was a little deflating, you know? But again, this was just something I was kind of articulating to him, as just kind of shooting the breeze on the plane so I think maybe once it gets out online, it seems like a bigger deal than it is but, that’s all I was articulating to him.
On the 3/25 Raw, Zayn was pinned by Bronson Reed as Intercontinental Champion GUNTHER watched on. Zayn and Gable were featured on-screen together in a backstage segment as well.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit Josh Martinez with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
