{"id":224308,"date":"2026-10-27T23:00:30","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T04:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/?p=224308"},"modified":"2026-10-27T23:00:30","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T04:00:30","slug":"sami-zayn-believed-the-time-had-passed-for-him-to-become-wwe-champion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2026\/10\/27\/sami-zayn-believed-the-time-had-passed-for-him-to-become-wwe-champion\/","title":{"rendered":"Sami Zayn believed the time had passed for him to become WWE Champion"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"pwtor-2611632237\" class=\"pwtor-before-content pwtor-entity-placement\" role=\"region\" aria-label=\"Advertisements\"><hr \/><b>SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)... <\/b>\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/widget.spreaker.com\/player?show_id=3076978&theme=light&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&autoplay=false&live-autoplay=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-logo=false&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-download=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"140px\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>\r\n<hr \/><\/div><p>WWE Undisputed Champion Sami Zayn previously believed that his opportunity to win a WWE Championship had passed him by when he didn&#8217;t beat Drew McIntyre for the title at the Royal Rumble PLE in January, but he did eventually capture his first WWE Championship at the Night of Champions in June. Zayn is now currently in the midst of his second reign with the WWE Undisputed Championship.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s cool,\u201d said Zayne in response to a question from Chris Van Vliet on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_GrMy3cOXJo&amp;time_continue=30&amp;source_ve_path=NzY3NTg&amp;embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fchrisvanvliet.com%2F\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Insight<\/a> about how it feels to be a champion in WWE. \u201cYeah, here\u2019s the thing that\u2019s funny about it because even at the start of this year, which was nine months ago, ten months ago now, whatever, I was wrestling Drew and I didn\u2019t win. I had kind of just battled with it and went, you know what, maybe the ship sailed. I was real close a couple of years ago with all the Bloodline stuff and all that, and even in the fallout of that. Then I was close, but after losing that match, I was like, well, you can\u2019t tell this story again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaybe it\u2019ll happen in some different way, and it did happen in a bit of a different way. But the Cinderella story, underdog who finally wins the big one, we burnt that card. That card was done after losing to Drew because you can only tell that story so many times. You can get them on board once, twice, three times, and it wasn\u2019t the right time. It wasn\u2019t. I didn\u2019t have the momentum that I had a year or two prior to that. But I had to kind of struggle to accept that maybe I just missed the window, slipped through the cracks, and it just won\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Zayn said he didn\u2019t believe he had to win a WWE Championship to validate his career. \u201cI\u2019ve said this before in other interviews, or to friends, or my wife, or whatever,\u201d said Zayn. \u201cI\u2019ve had a tremendous career and winning the world title at that point is just the cherry on top. It would be nice to have, but it\u2019s not like if I never win it, it\u2019s like I never got it. You know what I mean? You don\u2019t live and die by these things. You kind of just got to look at the big picture.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sami Zayn: WWE Championship, The Bloodline, Roman Reigns, Kevin Owens, El Generico\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_GrMy3cOXJo?start=30&amp;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"WWE RAW POST-SHOW (10\/19): Keller &amp; Weigle talk 946 retreating after Roman shows up, Sami-Roman summit, Gable, Breakker, Penta, Tessitore\" src=\"https:\/\/widget.spreaker.com\/player?episode_id=75870322&amp;theme=light&amp;playlist=false&amp;playlist-continuous=false&amp;chapters-image=true&amp;episode_image_position=right&amp;hide-logo=false&amp;hide-likes=false&amp;hide-comments=false&amp;hide-sharing=false&amp;hide-download=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"200px\" frameborder=\"0\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Wade Keller Post-show (10\/19) - WWE Raw w\/Keller &amp; Weigle\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jT61r7PKAqo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div class=\"pwtor-end-article-groups pwtor-entity-placement\" id=\"pwtor-412275263\"><div id=\"pwtor-2025080615\" role=\"region\" aria-label=\"Advertisements\"><div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280\" id=\"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\nTHANK YOU FOR VISITING<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>WWE Undisputed Champion Sami Zayn previously believed that his opportunity to win a WWE Championship had passed him by when he didn&#8217;t beat Drew McIntyre for the title at the Royal Rumble PLE in January, <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2026\/10\/27\/sami-zayn-believed-the-time-had-passed-for-him-to-become-wwe-champion\/\" title=\"Sami Zayn believed the time had passed for him to become WWE Champion\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":218951,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4247,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prowrestlingnews","category-interview-highlights","category-news_wwe"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/post\/2026\/07\/Screenshot-2026-07-05-at-5.52.43-PM.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224308"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224310,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224308\/revisions\/224310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}