Vince McMahon Realizes Sami Zayn Was Entertaining When He Saw Him Guest Referee Match

During his early years on the main roster in WWE, Sami Zayn learned that you have to stand up for yourself for your career. That even meant going to Vince McMahon for advice.

In the latest episode of “Broken Skull Sessions,” Zayn explained to WWE Hall of Famer “Stone Cold” Steve Austin that in 2017 he had started “to feel like I’m spinning my wheels”. He was seeing other Superstars who had come up around him in the business like his good friend Kevin Owens and Seth Rollins enjoying big pushes, which led to Zayn going directly to McMahon and asking, “What can I do different here?” Vince McMahon had quite an answer.

“He goes, ‘Well, it’s because you haven’t turned heel yet. And at that point, I had been a perennial babyface my entire career, I’d never not been a babyface. And I was like, ‘Oh, that was not at all what I expected to hear, but okay.’ But now that’s in his kind of thinking all of a sudden, Sami as a heel. Because everyone’s only ever known me as this babyface, when the idea first comes up of Sami heel it’s, ‘Oh, no no no, he’s the ultimate babyface, he’s the babyface.’ But I end up turning heel, and that, I think, really allows me to spread my wings as far a character and as far as promos.”

Since turning heel, Zayn has been in major storylines with Johnny Knoxville and worked alongside The Bloodline recently. Zayn is a great worker inside the ring, although it was actually a role involving him as a special guest referee that helped him catch the attention of the higher up’s in WWE.

“They’re watching me in Gorilla, and I’m not trying to do anything, I’m just being me, but as a guest ref. For some reason, Gorilla was very tickled by my antics, like PS Hayes and Vince and whatever, they saw something in me, in that moment, that they didn’t see in my work or in my promos, but something in that moment, they’re like, ‘You’re just so entertaining, you can do anything.’”

We’ll see what happens next with Zayn when he comes back from his injury in the near future. He’s the Roddy Piper of the company currently.

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