Sami Zayn talks world title aspirations, differences between Vince McMahon and Paul Levesque booking, more

[Chris]

Sami Zayn on why he was more likely to win title under Vince McMahon

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW BY ALEX MCCARTHY: Zayn has become one of the most popular stars in WWE, shining over the last few years and is the reigning Intercontinental Champion.

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Sami Zayn has opened up on his chances of winning a world title in WWE, and why he feels he is less likely to do so under Triple H.

Zayn has become one of the most popular stars in WWE, shining over the last few years and is the reigning Intercontinental Champion having dethroned Gunther at WrestleMania.

He has held a plethora of championships in the company, but never a world title, and is keen to put the record straight.

It's unclear what the future holds, however, with WWE now in a new era under Triple H following the departure of Vince McMahon, and the two men likes to run their WWE shows differently.

Speaking exclusively to Mail Sport, Zayn revealed his admiration for Triple H, though acknowledged he may now not have a chance of holding major WWE gold in his career.

'I think Vince saw me much more as a bad guy, for a number of reasons. He saw my irksome qualities that he thought lent itself to being an irksome character. Having said that, I think things were a lot more unpredictable because of the nature of Vince's week to week, kind of approach, that sometimes the marble would just fall in the right hole, and now you're champion, whereas with Hunter, I think it's much more he has longer-term vision, and if you're not part of that vision, then the chances of breaking into that vision are much, much slimmer.

'It's kind of a double edged sword. He might see me in a way that lends itself more to being in that mix and possibly winning it. But on the other hand, I could have just slipped on a banana peel and won the world title.

'I just do my best. I just give the best performances I can give, I try to perform with as much emotion as possible and tell the best stories I can tell. And I hope that that eventually gets me there.

'I'd like to win the world title once before I call it a day, there's no question, but I don't live and die by that. It'd be great, and I really appreciate people saying they'd love to see it. I'd love to see it too, and I hope it happens, but if it doesn't, thank you just the same, because it's been amazing.'

Having enjoyed various different storylines over the years, Zayn was the man to dethrone Intercontinental Champion Gunther at the end of his 666-day reign at this year's WrestleMania.

Last year, he teamed with long-time friend Kevin Owens in the main event to beat The Usos for the tag titles, and had a comedy-style match with stunt legend Johnny Knoxville the year prior.

Zayn has received plaudits for his work over the last three years on the grandest stage of them all, and it's something he's extremely proud of.

'In some respects, there were some things that I had pitched or things creatively that I thought we could have done, or even fun things, because we have a fun kind of relationship as friends,' he said on his run with Owens. 'There were some things I would have loved to have done, but I think our actual reign, I don't really have much negative to say about it, other than maybe the lack of diversity in opponents because we were really joined at the hip with Judgement Day. But I also don't mind, because it was extremely challenging to wrestle them so much and to try to not get people to burn out on it, and to constantly have excellent matches.

'I'm very, very, very proud. I almost feel like, because they saw so many of the matches, people kind of forgot how good those matches were. But if you go back and watch any match that we had with any combination of Judgement Day, we had people rocking and rolling in the main event of the third hour of Raw, and that's always a hard thing to do, and we were doing that every single week, and I'm very, very proud of that.

'I've had a pretty good track record at WrestleMania in general, even my first one, we had this ladder match that I was really proud of, the Daniel Bryan return match... I remember when we were doing that match, I couldn't believe we had a match of that magnitude.

'It was probably a top five match on a WrestleMania card, you're lucky to get that in your career. That was WrestleMania 34, who would have guessed that all those years later we are getting to do so many other great things?

'I try to just appreciate things, especially when I'm in them. So if those were my last three 'Manias, man, pretty good. There are Hall of Famers that never got those kind of stories or have those kind of matches at WrestleMania. That's something to be proud of.

'Kevin and I were in a ladder match at our first WrestleManias together. We teamed at WrestleMania. We faced each other at WrestleMania. We won the Tag Team Titles in the main event of WrestleMania. Everything we could have ever dreamed.

'He actually said this, and it's true, we couldn't even have dreamt it up, because that dream just didn't exist. The Tag Team titles have never main evented WrestleMania, ever. It just wasn't even something you could dream about.'