Sami Zayn Discusses Being A Draw For WWE, Main Eventing WrestleMania With Kevin Owens
The Bloodline story helped elevate Sami Zayn into a main event player in WWE. Reflecting on its success on "After the Bell," Zayn said he knew as early as September 2022 that he was involved in a major money-drawing angle, which is the first time in his career when he could felt confident saying that.
"I don't go out of my way to call myself a draw," Zayn said. "I think WWE is the draw, and then within the product, you have components that are going to really help the product, and I've always viewed myself as that. But this was the first time where I could look at something I was doing and I'd be like ... this is driving business. This is drawing." A key dramatic beat was the involvement of Kevin Owens, which led up to Zayn turning his back on The Bloodline and siding with Owens. Zayn explained that the addition of his real-life friendship with Owens is part of what made the latter part of the storyline, including their main event tag team title match at WrestleMania, so much more meaningful for himself and fans.
"If it wasn't Kevin the whole thing wouldn't have worked," Zayn explained. "Because for me to be put in that predicament or for me to have my loyalty tested, the crux of all that was that I had this allegiance to someone who's legitimately my oldest and longest friend in the business and everyone knows that story." The WrestleMania match ultimately ended up being a battle of two sets of brothers — real-life twins Jimmy and Jey Uso, against two men who, in Zayn's words, "may as well be family" — himself and Owens. "That heightened the success of the storyline," he said. "But it also obviously heightened how special it was to main event WrestleMania together, in a match that really there was no precedent for. Because the idea of a tag team title match main eventing WrestleMania even a few years ago, you never would have dreamed of that."
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "After the Bell" with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.