Sami Zayn is the Undisputed WWE Champion, and if you’re not currently losing your mind, I genuinely don’t know what you’ve been watching for the last ten years.
ESPN called it one of the biggest title wins in recent memory. That’s the polite version. The real version is that Sami Zayn, the funniest, most lovable loser in WWE for a decade, rolled up Cody Rhodes in Riyadh on June 27th and became Sami Zayn, WWE champion. Those five words shouldn’t exist. They do now.
This was not supposed to happen. I’m a casual wrestling guy. My knowledge of the product basically starts and ends with whatever my cousin texts me during pay-per-views. But even I know Sami Zayn’s deal. He’s the guy who gets the moment and then gets it taken away. He’s Daniel Bryan if Daniel Bryan had lost at WrestleMania 30. He’s the best man at the wedding who gives the greatest speech and then drives home alone.
And then Cody set him up for a second CrossRhodes, and Sami slipped out, and he rolled him up, and Michael Cole screamed “a miracle in Riyadh,” and then the entire Kingdom Arena went absolutely nuclear.
https://twitter.com/WWE/status/2070956613490315520
That crowd reaction is what I keep coming back to. Because Night of Champions was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and you have to understand what that means beyond the wrestling. Sami Zayn is the first openly Muslim, Arab/Syrian WWE champion. The Iron Sheik (Iranian-born) held the WWF title back in 1983. That’s how long it’s been. Forty-plus years. And then Sami Zayn, the son of Syrian immigrants, won the most prestigious title in sports entertainment in front of an arena full of people who recognized exactly what they were witnessing. The title didn’t just come to Sami. It came to them.
Post-match, Zayn stood there with the belt and said: “Twenty plus years in the game at the highest level — never got the recognition… Forever, I will be, Sami Zayn, WWE champion.”
I read that to my sister in the group chat and she, who has never willingly watched wrestling in her life, immediately responded with a crying emoji. That’s how good this is. It transcends the product.
Now, the complicating layer, because I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t exist. WWE’s relationship with Saudi Arabia is genuinely complicated. The shows there have been controversial since the beginning. There are real criticisms about sportswashing that serious people take seriously. Sami Zayn winning this title in Riyadh is beautiful and complicated at the same time, and you’re allowed to hold both of those things. I’m not going to tell you how to feel about the geopolitics. What I will tell you is that the thousands inside Kingdom Arena were not doing a geopolitical calculation when that three-count hit. They were just watching a miracle happen in their city.
He’s a Grand Slam champion now. He’s held the US Title, the Intercontinental Title, the Tag Titles. He’s got them all. For the rest of his career, wherever he goes, whatever he does, he gets to be introduced as a former WWE champion. They can never take that away.
Twenty plus years. For everything they put him through, the least they could do was give him this.
For more on the WWE title picture, check out our WWE coverage.
