Sami Zayn’s match with Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns at the Elimination Chamber pay-per-view in Montreal back in February seemed like the best chance the Canadian star would ever get at becoming a world champion in WWE. The match was building off the hottest story in all of WWE at the time with Zayn’s allegiance to The Bloodline being severed, but an accidental interference from Jey Uso (who wouldn’t officially betray Reigns until months later) gave Reigns the opening to beat Zayn and keep his record-breaking reign alive. Zayn would go on to win the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championships with Kevin Owens against The Usos at WrestleMania 39 and has focused on the tag title picture ever since.ย
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However, Zayn’s world championship aspirations haven’t fully gone away. He discussed it in an interview with Xfinity alongside Owens this week.ย
“It would have been kind of perfect, a storybook ending, if I had dethroned Roman. Sure, of course, but if you look at more five years from now, ten years from now, the totality of where it all lies, I think you will see that it is one great chapter, hopefully, in a story,” Zayn said (h/t Fightful). “For sure, unquestionably, whether it was the right or wrong decision, the way it ended, there is no question that had it gone my way that night in Montreal or at WrestleMania or something with Roman, unquestionably it would have been a moment that would have definitely been replayed many times. I still think what we did was very special and as you can see by what has continued to happen with The Usos and Roman, that story still has some special moments. This is one of those things where you just need time to see where it all falls.
“I don’t know if this is a valid comparison, but it’s almost like when Brock (Lesnar) beat Undertaker and ended the streak,” he continued. “It was such a shocking moment that you kind of didn’t know what to make of it. I remember watching it live with Juice Robinson. He was so frazzled by it, ‘I need five years to know whether this was the right call or not.’ It’s kind of true. You had to wait several years to see all the consequences and ripple effects of that moment. It took five years to see ‘this all goes back to do that.’ Maybe it was chapter one, for me personally, in this huge story that is my quest to one day win the big one.”
NXT: Great American Bash (2023)
- NXT Championship:ย Carmelo Hayes vs. Ilja Dragunov
- NXT Tag Team Championships:ย Gallus vs. The D’Angelo Family
- NXT Women’s Championship:ย Tiffany Stratton vs. Thea Hall
- NXT North American Championship:ย Dominik Mysterio vs. Mustafa Ali
- Roxanne Perez vs. Blair Davenport
WWEย SummerSlamย 2023 Card & Rumored Matches
- Undisputedย WWEย Universal Championship:ย Roman Reigns vs. Jey Uso (Tribal Combat Rules)
- World Heavyweight Championship:ย Seth Rollins vs. Finn Balor
- SmackDown Women’s Championship:ย Asuka vs. Charlotte Flair vs. Bianca Belairย
- Cody Rhodes vs. Brock Lesnarย
- Ronda Rousey vs. Shayna Baszler (Yet To Be Confirmed)
- Intercontinental Championship:ย Gunther vs. Drew McIntyre (Yet to Be Confirmed)
- Becky Lynch vs. Trish Stratus (Yet to Be Confirmed)
- Ricochet vs.ย Logan Paulย (Yet to Be Confirmed)
- Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championships:ย Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn vs. TBA (Rumored)
