Sami Zayn says his second Undisputed WWE Championship win feels different from the first.
On the September 11th edition of SmackDown, Sami Zayn shocked the world for a second time by recapturing the Undisputed WWE Championship from CM Punk. Punk had defeated Zayn for the title less than two weeks after he won it for the first time at Night of Champions, leading many to think he was a transitional champion and unlikely to hold the gold again.
During an appearance on Busted Open, Zayn said that even he felt like his first title reign might have just been a fluke.
“So the first one and the second one, even though they were so close together, felt really different, because the first one’s like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe I did it. I just can’t believe it.’ But then it was also quite short-lived, as has been pretty widely discussed by now. It only lasted a very short time.”
“It kind of felt like maybe it was a miracle, maybe it was a fluke, maybe it was this, but I got to say I did it, you know, and it’s really hard to get there. I mean, there’s probably less than 100 people in human history that have held that title. So now to be on that list, it was like, ‘Well, I did it. Wow.’”
Now that he’s won the championship again, Sami Zayn feels he’s cemented himself in the top tier of WWE.
“But now doing it the second time is like, ‘No. No, it’s no fluke.’ I feel like it cemented me in a way. I don’t know, hopefully that makes sense, but totally different feeling. Equal amount of pride, but it kind of washes away that little part of like, ‘Well, I just got lucky,’ because maybe that is in the back of your head. But now the second time around… you don’t get lucky twice.”
Some WWE Figures Were Against Sami Zayn Winning The Undisputed WWE Title Again
Soon after Sami Zayn’s second Undisputed WWE Championship win, it was reported that some in WWE were opposed to the move. According to Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio, the decision for Zayn to dethrone CM Punk was made for “storyline reasons” that will make sense when people look back on it. Despite this, he said, “There were certainly people who were against it, but they did it. And that was that.”
