If you watched the Canadiens game on RDS last Tuesday, you heard him alongside Pierre Houde. If you attended the game at the Bell Center you saw him throwing pucks at targets during the break.
Posted at 5:03pm
If you’re on Twitter, you’ve probably heard about his viral photo with Youppi! laughed.
And if you’re a wrestling fanatic, you saw him in the middle of the arena with fellow wrestler Kevin Owens last month as the curtain went down on WWE’s flagship Royal Rumble.
It’s a Quebecer who’s the athlete of the hour in the crazy world of professional wrestling. That wrestler is Sami Zayn, the Laval resident who takes center stage at one of the city’s biggest wrestling weekends in recent history.
WWE presents two shows over two nights, both at the Bell Center. It starts with Smackdown!, his weekly Friday show, and continues on Saturday with Elimination Chamber, one of those high-profile shows of the year. The tennis equivalent of the Masters 1000 tournaments.
We meet Zayn at a downtown hotel on Friday morning at a WWE media event. Even if he doesn’t come with a belt over his shoulder, the cameras follow him as he echoes into the reception room.
“I was in town last week, then had to go to South Carolina and Brooklyn for events. I came back on Tuesday,” explains Zayn, Rami Sebei, his real name.
Since then he has been on a promotional tour. A big hockey fan, he’s still in ecstasy after his magical night at the Canadiens game. “I will never forget the experience of going on the ice and commentating with Pierre Houde. I’ve been listening to it on RDS for 20 years, it’s been an honor! »
The wrestler of the hour
In the eyes of the general public in Quebec, Kevin Owens remains the face of the current generation’s struggle. He was world champion, it was he who was invited to Tout le monde en parle and to various variety shows.
PHOTO ERICK LABBÉ, LE SOLEIL ARCHIVE
Sami Zayn at a WWE Gala at the Videotron Center last August
But it’s impossible to ignore Zayn’s rise in recent years. Crowd reactions don’t lie. The Undertaker, who has been a face of WWE for 30 years, has been highlighting Zayn’s work across platforms lately.
“His character has become an integral part. When guys like Undertaker talk about it, it’s because he has the respect of everyone in the business,” WWE Raw Wrestling host Pat Laprade told TVA Sports.
Zayn will therefore be in a title match against Roman Reigns, holder of the 900-day Universal title, in the finale of Saturday’s show. A final that is part of his spectacular rise. When actor Johnny Knoxville ventured into WWE for a match last year, Zayn was tasked with wrestling him in front of approximately 80,000 fans at WrestleMania 38.
Since then, Zayn has been involved in a bizarre history with the Bloodline, a group of real-life wrestlers belonging to the Roman Reigns family, of which Zayn has become an “honorary member”. That story ended with a chair kick in the back, the number one cause of conflict in wrestling.
It’s been the best time of my career since the pandemic began. Because I’ve done things I’m really proud of. I had the Intercontinental Championship. When I lost the belt my character became conspiratorial and that was fun. People know I’m a good wrestler, but they’ve seen my personality, they’ve seen that I can tell a story. This is where I became a bigger star.
Sami Zain
His transformation is all the more impressive because, let’s remember, he fought under a mask in WWE, in the role of El Generico, a character who never spoke at the microphone as he only spoke Spanish.
“It used to be, ‘He’s good, but.’ Now there are no “buts”, analyzes Pat Laprade, who has proved that he is capable of fighting, acting comedy, taking a story from A to B using only a microphone.His acting skills are well known to the public , and that’s wrestling. It’s a mix of athletics, developing character, speaking on the mic in an interview. »
To buckle the buckle
Saturday-sized events are rarely presented in Montreal. It will be only the fourth in WWE history.
The first of these events was Survivor Series 1997, which made its mark. A 13-year-old Sami Zayn was there at a young Molson center (now Bell) who was one year old at the time.
“That closes the circle. The first WWE event I saw was at the Bell Center, it was Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels. I remember the hustle and bustle in the city, at school. People were so excited. Having a title fight at Bell Center is something special. But it’s not just the fight. It’s the excitement, the atmosphere of a big fight, that makes this week special. »
CAPSULES
History was made 25 years ago
The first major WWE event in Montreal is still being talked about 25 years later. It was 1997’s Survivor Series, which saw the finals against two wrestlers who were then building their legends, Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels. “Bret was Canadian, so he had some audience favor, a lot less than he thought because he’s still an Anglophone from Calgary, so it doesn’t have the same connotation for us,” says Pat Laprade. Especially the end of this fight remains unreal. The script called for Hart, the champion, to keep his belt, but in an unscripted outcome, the referee used a moment when Hart was in a vulnerable position to declare the fight over and give Michaels the title. When the broadcast was over, seeing that he had been stripped of the title, Hart broke ringside monitors before slapping WWE Owner Vince McMahon in the face backstage. This event is known as the “Montreal Screwjob,” the Montreal Scam, if you will. Hart was already planning to leave WWE, but McMahon did so to hasten his wrestler’s departure.
Zayn and Saudi Arabia
Last month, news broke that WWE had been sold to Saudi Arabian interests. Since then, Sami Zayn’s future has been the subject of all sorts of theories. It’s that Zayn is of Syrian origin and hasn’t attended the events that WWE has hosted in Saudi Arabia for the past several years, which many see as a boycott on his part. However, Zayn had taken part in a tour in that country in 2014. Sales rumors have since become less persistent. At the very end of the interview, Zayn tried to calm things down as to whether such a transaction, if confirmed, would mean his departure from WWE. “The internet is funny. It starts with a guess and the stories grow. A lot of people panicked and I guess they’re worried about me. But no matter what happens, everything will be fine. »