Sami Zayn says winning the Undisputed WWE Championship has allowed him to breathe after years of self-doubt and fear that his opportunity had passed.
Zayn appeared on Tuesday’s WWE Raw Recap podcast with Sam Roberts and Megan Morant after defeating Cody Rhodes and Gunther at Night of Champions to win the first world-level championship of his WWE career.
The new champion said he was still processing the moment, but described the feeling as relief as much as joy.
Zayn said the championship win carried special meaning because it was the Undisputed WWE Championship. He was asked about the years since his 2023 match with Roman Reigns in Montreal, when many fans believed he might win WWE’s top title.
Zayn said the Montreal loss was “a heartbreaker,” but it did not make him lose faith.
“I thought, well, this is the closest I’ve come, so I’ll just get closer and closer till I get there,” Zayn said.
‘It was the first time my faith was shook’
The loss that affected him most, Zayn said, was not Montreal but his defeat to Drew McIntyre at the Royal Rumble earlier this year.
Zayn said he knew he had the ability to stand with WWE’s top names, listing McIntyre, Reigns, Rhodes and Seth Rollins as his peers. He said that certainty made the repeated near misses harder to accept.
That’s almost what made it more maddening is why them and why not me? Why is it so close and I just can’t get my hands on it?
After losing at the Royal Rumble, Zayn said he began to wonder whether his window had closed.
He pointed to the rise of Trick Williams, Oba Femi, Je’Von Evans and Bron Breakker as part of a wider generational shift in WWE, saying he could feel fans moving toward the next wave.
It was the first time my faith was shook. I knew I had the talent, I knew I had everything, I knew I was just as good as any of these guys.
‘What a great career’
Zayn said he expected winning the title to feel like pure elation, but instead found the emotion more complicated.
He compared it to watching players win the Stanley Cup and expecting unfiltered celebration, only to find that his own reaction involved several emotions at once.
“You get hit with sadness and gratitude and happy,” Zayn said. “You get hit with like a million things. And there’s so much that your brain can’t process at all.”
Rather than thinking of one specific moment, Zayn said he found himself reflecting on the broader arc of his WWE career.
He pointed to several chapters, including NXT, his match with Shinsuke Nakamura, his work with Kevin Owens, the Johnny Knoxville match, and The Bloodline story.
Zayn said he has had a career full of memorable stories, even before winning WWE’s top title.
There are people who won the championship multiple times and, if I may be so arrogant as to say, I still think a lot of them still didn’t have the career I had in terms of these chapters that were so memorable or that touched people.
Zayn said there are multiple-time world champions who never had the chance to tell a story like The Bloodline.
“They never got to touch people in that kind of way,” he said. “And to rock the foundation of the business like that. That was a really special thing.”
Zayn says early WWE dreams felt ‘unfathomable’
Zayn also reflected on how unlikely his WWE career once seemed.
He said that when he was breaking into wrestling, performers who looked like him did not exist at the top level of the business in the way he would later experience.
Because of that, Zayn said he does not describe the WWE Championship, WrestleMania main events, or Grand Slam accomplishments as childhood “dreams.” To him, they felt more like fantasies because they were beyond what he thought was possible.
If I just set my foot in a WWE ring, then I’ll have lived the dream. I’ll have done it. That was the extent of my goal.
Zayn said that simply getting to WWE once felt like the ceiling. Winning its top championship, he said, was “absolutely mind boggling” from an achievement standpoint.
He also spoke about the range of stories he has been able to tell, saying they are not like the wrestling stories he grew up watching.
There’s just a depth of texture and emotion to some of these stories. And I hope, maybe I’m blowing my own head up bigger than it needs to be right now, but I feel like when it’s all said and done, and if and when my career is ever looked back upon, I think only later will you start to see, man, this really ran the gamut here.
Zayn said winning the WWE Championship forced him to pause and consider the full ride.
“The highs, the lows, and the quality of these stories and the quality of these matches,” he said. “What a distinct and unique kind of career.”
