Zayn also explains how he feels Paul Levesque views him as a character as opposed to how Vince McMahon did.
Present day, Sami Zayn is reigning as WWE Intercontinental Champion. His next defense is taking place at the King and Queen of the Ring Premium Live Event in Saudi Arabia.
Zayn won the I.C. Title from GUNTHER at WrestleMania XL and that marked the end of GUNTHER’s 666 day-reign with the belt. It was in the main event of WrestleMania 39 that Zayn and Kevin Owens captured the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championships and Zayn looked back on that title run.
He told Mail Sport’s Alex McCarthy that he does not have anything negative to say about the run, but feels there was a lack of diversity in opponents. Zayn feels they were tied to The Judgment Day.
In some respects, there were some things that I had pitched or things creatively that I thought we could have done, or even fun things, because we have a fun kind of relationship as friends (Zayn said about he & Kevin Owens’ Undisputed WWE Tag Title run). There were some things I would have loved to have done, but I think our actual reign, I don’t really have much negative to say about it, other than maybe the lack of diversity in opponents because we were really joined at the hip with Judgement Day. But I also don’t mind, because it was extremely challenging to wrestle them so much and to try to not get people to burn out on it, and to constantly have excellent matches. I’m very, very, very proud. I almost feel like, because they saw so many of the matches, people kind of forgot how good those matches were. But if you go back and watch any match that we had with any combination of Judgement Day, we had people rocking and rolling in the main event of the third hour of Raw, and that’s always a hard thing to do, and we were doing that every single week, and I’m very, very proud of that. I’ve had a pretty good track record at WrestleMania in general, even my first one, we had this Ladder match that I was really proud of, the Daniel Bryan return match… I remember when we were doing that match, I couldn’t believe we had a match of that magnitude. It was probably a top-five match on a WrestleMania card. You’re lucky to get that in your career. That was WrestleMania 34. Who would have guessed that all those years later, we are getting to do so many other great things? I try to just appreciate things, especially when I’m in them. So if those were my last three ‘Manias, man, pretty good. There are Hall of Famers that never got those kind of stories or have those kind of matches at WrestleMania. That’s something to be proud of. Kevin and I were in a Ladder match at our first WrestleManias together. We teamed at WrestleMania. We faced each other at WrestleMania. We won the Tag Team Titles in the main event of WrestleMania. Everything we could have ever dreamed. He actually said this, and it’s true, ‘We couldn’t even have dreamt it up, because that dream just didn’t exist.’ The Tag Team titles have never main evented WrestleMania, ever. It just wasn’t even something you could dream about.
Elsewhere during the chat, Zayn weighed in on the differences between how he thinks Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque views him as a character versus how Vince McMahon viewed him. Zayn went on to add that he hopes he can win the WWE World Title one day.
Here’s how I see it: I think Hunter sees me differently from how Vince (McMahon) saw me, especially as a good guy. I think Vince saw me much more as a bad guy, for a number of reasons. He saw my irksome qualities that he thought lent itself to being an irksome character. Having said that, I think things were a lot more unpredictable because of the nature of Vince’s week-to-week, kind of approach, that sometimes the marble would just fall in the right hole, and now you’re champion, whereas with Hunter, I think it’s much more he has longer-term vision, and if you’re not part of that vision, then the chances of breaking into that vision are much, much slimmer. It’s kind of a double-edged sword. He might see me in a way that lends itself more to being in that mix and possibly winning it. But on the other hand, I could have just slipped on a banana peel and won the World Title. I just do my best. I just give the best performances I can give, I try to perform with as much emotion as possible and tell the best stories I can tell. And I hope that-that eventually gets me there.
Zayn brought up being tied to The Judgment Day and a member of the group, Damian Priest is the reigning World Heavyweight Champion. On the 5/13 WWE Raw, he granted Drew McIntyre a title opportunity.
Sami picked up a win over Otis on 5/13 and ahead of the King and Queen of the Ring P.L.E., he’ll be taking on Chad Gable in singles action.
