Sami Zayn comments on winning the WWE Title after years of being an underdog character

I was real close a couple of years ago with all the Bloodline stuff and all that, and even in the fallout of that, I was close. But if I lost after losing that match, I was like, ‘Well, you can’t tell this story again.’ Maybe it’ll happen in some different way, and it did happen in a bit of a different way.

But the Cinderella story, the underdog who finally wins the big one—we burned 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’t the right time. It wasn’t. I didn’t 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’t happen. I’ve said this before in other interviews, or to friends, or my wife, or whatever. I’ve 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’s not like if I never win it, it’s like I never got it. You know what I mean? You don’t live and die by these things. You kind of just got to look at the big picture.

I don’t think anything changed, and that’s actually the point. It’s that I kept doing what I do, which is making sure that everything I’m involved in is as good as it could possibly be.

Eventually, a lot has to happen, even when you’re doing good work and you’re great and all this stuff, to win the WWE Championship. It is like there is no such thing as a fluke win. I know when I won it the first time and it was nine days, in character, you could say I was a fluke. There’s no such thing as a fluke WWE title win.

To even be in the periphery of it is insane. To even be in the mix, to even be in the discussion, to even have title matches, even if you’re losing them, is extremely one in a billion already, to be put in that position. So to win it, there’s an immeasurable number of variables that are required to be in that position. So there’s no such thing as a fluke WWE title win.

So I just think kind of slow and steady wins the race. You keep doing good work, and then it’s timing, and that’s the thing that a lot of people don’t account for. There are so many variables that are out of your control. Of course, you control what you can control, but there are so many variables that are just not yours to play with.

And I think timing ended up being the deciding factor, obviously on the day of or whatever, right place, right time, right variables going into it, all that. But also, you have to work really, really hard and have this crazy level of consistency to constantly be even in the mix.”