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WWE star Sami Zayn will face Cody Rhodes and Gunther in a triple threat match for the WWE Undisputed Championship at Night of Champions on Saturday.
Since the calendar turned to 2026, Zayn has sparked a different reaction from the crowd. The boos towards him that started the year have gotten louder. Zayn’s complaints about not being respected enough or getting the opportunities he thinks he deserves have also reached a fever pitch.
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Sami Zayn and WWE Undisputed Champion Cody Rhodes speak during SmackDown at Unipol Arena in Bologna, Italy on June 5, 2026. (Andrew Timms/WWE)
There have been complaints about Zayn’s different character work in recent months. But anyone who’s been in a position where they’re a veteran of an organization and has seen the rest of their colleagues gravitate toward the new shiny object or rock star of the group might feel a little more for Zayn.
He told Pak Gazette Digital in an interview that his character is now “choose your own adventure.”
“Well, it’s kind of interesting because it could mean something different to different people… There’s a lot to say about this. I don’t even know where to start. It’s basically up to you. It’s about choosing your own adventure,” he said. “I think if you’re a fan of mine and you’ve been a fan for a long time and you want to see me win the big tournament and this and that and you just stick with me and you’re not as fickle or fickle as some fans who tend to get tired a little bit quicker. If there’s a little bit more of an emotional connection there and you haven’t distanced yourself yet, then you might still be on my side, the ‘ride or die fans’ as I call them. But they might be. Be totally with me and them, it hasn’t changed. a lot, and for these other fans, they may have gotten tired of it.
“And you know, when I was working with Trick Williams and fighting Trick Williams, it became very apparent that there’s something new here that’s very exciting and it’s like, ‘We’ve seen this. We’ve seen you. And it’s like you’re a pair of comfortable jeans and we get it, but we want this now.’ So to take that and say, ‘Oh, I noticed that,’ and play with that a little bit and turn it to your advantage, it’s going to mean something different to those fans. So, that’s the goal of this character right now. You can have it at once. way or you can have it another way. And the behavior will mean something different to one group of fans versus another.”
Zayn suggested that he was inspired by how fans reacted to John Cena and Roman Reigns over the years.
He said Cena and Reigns didn’t necessarily change who they were. They just leaned towards where the fans took them.
Sami Zayn makes his entrance during SmackDown at Amica Mutual Pavilion in Providence, RI on June 12, 2026. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE)
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“And the reason I think this is a little bit different and I don’t want to get into all the psychology of it or go into big character breakdowns, but when I imagine things about this, I look at guys who really divided the crowd in the past like Cena for years, or Roman Reigns when he was like ‘The Big Dog’ and he was clearly the number one good guy, but a lot of fans were booing him and all that kind of stuff, those guys, the only thing I noticed about them is their demeanor really. It didn’t change whether they liked them or not,” he said. “They were just themselves. And the idea of being like my behavior changes depending on whether you like me or not, which I think could be really interesting. And part of what excites me is that it really goes from crowd to crowd.”
“So when I go to Saudi Arabia, I don’t know if Boston will treat me the same and I don’t know if it will be the same as when I go to New York. And I don’t know if it will be the same when I go to Montreal, Toronto, London or Paris. That, to me, is very exciting.”
Zayn had been a top babyface for a few years and his popularity skyrocketed when he joined The Bloodline as the “Honorary Uce” and then turned on Roman Reigns, Jey and Jimmy Uso.
He still heard cheers in the years after the moment at Elimination Chamber 2023. Zayn was asked by Pak Gazette Digital if it was “refreshing” to feel some heat from the crowd.
“Yeah, it depends. I guess it depends on what your goals are,” he replied. “I don’t know, maybe I’m old school in this sense, although I’m playing with a new school idea here, but I’m a little bit old school in the sense that if I want to be cheered, then I’m working to be cheered. If I want to be booed, then I’m working to be booed. But now I’m playing with this kind of new avant-garde thing where it’s a little more like, let’s see what happens here. Let’s see what happens there and maybe I’ll take those cheers, thank you very much and maybe get some boos if the situation calls for it.
Sami Zayn and Trick Williams react during the United States Championship match at WrestleMania 42 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada on April 19, 2026. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
“So, it’s a little different. For me, it really depends on what the goal is. If this was two or three years ago and I go and do everything I can to get people to join me for the sake of the story, the character, whatever and they reject me outright, I don’t think that feels very good. It feels better when you’re the manipulator because that’s who we are in a way. If I take them where I want to take them, then it feels great.”
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Night of Champions will take place at 1 pm ET and can be seen on ESPN.
