We caught up with former NXT Champion Sami Zayn earlier today during a WWE conference call. We spoke to Sami about his first year on WWE’s main roster, the 2017 WWE Draft and being unsure of his WrestleMania plans.
Q: You made your Wrestlemania debut last year. What was the experience like?
A: It was pretty incredible and I don’t take it for granted because now, a year later, I find myself unsure of what I’ll be doing at Wrestlemania so I realize how lucky I was to kinda come up at the right time, where I was already figured into a storyline with Kevin Owens because of our history there.
And I kinda got called up at a time when I was able to come right into the scene and be on my first Wrestlemania, the biggest WrestleMania of all time, in Dallas. It was pretty overwhelming. Honestly, it was just an awesome experience but now, with this year being a little more uncertain for me, I really realized how precious a spot on WrestleMania is.
It kinda just makes that moment or that memory of being at WrestleMania last year, taste even cherished and even more sweet.
Q: What was the transition from NXT to the WWE main roster like?
A: You know, it wasn’t really too bad because the whole point of NXT, the whole reason it’s there is to get you kind of ready for the WWE. NXT, is really like a mini version of WWE RAW or SmackDown so I felt pretty well prepared to go in.
My time in NXT is really really precious to me and it’s really cherished. I think I accomplished a lot there. We did something as a group that was also very special. It really made NXT into something. In that one weekend in particular last year in Dallas, where I had my last NXT match and my first WrestleMania match, it was a really cool and sort of symbolic weekend in making that transition of ending my NXT career against Nakamura and really getting my WWE career started by performing at WrestleMania in that ladder match. That was a really cool weekend and kind of summed it all up for me in a lot of ways – where I’ve been and where I’m headed now.
Now I’m here. My time in NXT was great but now I’m in WWE and I just want to be on many more WrestleMania’s for years to come.
Q: When the 2017 WWE Draft comes up, if given the choice, would you prefer to stay on RAW or move to SmackDown Live?
A: I really don’t know if I have a preference. In some ways, going to SmackDown Live would be really cool. I feel like there are a lot of good opponents for me and I think there is a lot of opportunity there. I can really see myself being in a pretty good spot up there, even wrestling for the WWE World Championship.
But I feel like if I left tomorrow, assuming that the draft is tomorrow, I’d feel a little incomplete. I’d feel like there was more that I could have accomplished on RAW. I like to leave each place better than I left it so I’d like to do more on RAW and make RAW a better place and accomplish more on RAW before I can even start thinking of going to SmackDown. That’s just the way that the chips fall and if I end up on SmackDown, I’d be happy to be there but I’d still feel like I had more to accomplish on RAW.
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