Sami Zayn thought the ship had sailed on his world title win.
The WWE Champion recently spoke to Chris Van Vliet for a new interview. He talked about things such as his work in The Bloodline, the US Title open challenge match against John Cena, his heel turn and more.
When asked how he felt on becoming a two-time WWE Champion, Sami Zayn recalled how things looked very bleak against him only a few months ago. He mentioned his Royal Rumble loss against Drew McIntyre from earlier this year, and noted that he thought the ship had sailed on his title win after that:
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.
We Burnt That Card: Sami Zayn
WWE had told the story of Sami Zayn challenging for the World Title as an underdog on multiple occasions. Many still believe that he should have defeated Roman Reigns at the 2023 Elimination Chamber PPV. The wrestling veteran explained that after the loss to McIntyre, he felt like WWE had exhausted the underdog card and Zayn had to struggle to accept that he had missed his window on a world title run:
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.
Sami Zayn finally won a World Title in WWE when he defeated Gunther and Cody Rhodes at the Night of Champions event in June. He recaptured the title from CM Punk during the September 11 episode of SmackDown, after the Straight Edge Star ended his first run with the belt at just 9 days.
