Backstage details of what happened between Sami Zayn and WWE before he was stripped of the IC title

As revealed in the recent episode of WWE Backstage, Sami Zayn was stripped of the Intercontinental Championship and a tournament was announced to crown the new Champion.

The tournament will begin on this week's episode of SmackDown and it puts into question the events that led to WWE making the decision to take the title off of Sami Zayn.

Sportskeeda's Tom Colohue and host Korey Gunz discussed the IC title situation and Sami Zayn's status on the most recent edition of the Dropkick DiSKussions podcast.

Tom stated that the WWE asked Sami Zayn a few times whether he was ready to return to action before stripping him of the title. Sami, however, was not certain about his future and it was speculated that he made a decision about his future after working the WrestleMania 36 PPV, where he defended the title against Daniel Bryan.

The WWE officials realized that Sami Zayn won't be able to return for the foreseeable future and wasted no time in declaring the title as vacant and announcing a tournament to get a new titleholder.

The storylines had to be rewritten and the tournament seemed like the most logical call given the circumstances.

Tom revealed the following:

Well, they asked Sami a few times if he was ready to come back. It's been a gradual process, he has not been able to say very certainly that, 'look, I will not be back', until recently. He came to a decision after he went to work at WrestleMania. Obviously had the match there, retained the belt. I don't know what made the decision for him, I'm sure he has his own personal reasons, so I'm going to leave the speculation there. Either way, the WWE knowing that he was not returning, at least for the foreseeable future, decided that they had to rewrite a lot of storylines. So they came up with the idea to strip him of the belt and put on a tournament.

When will Sami Zayn return?

Sami Zayn has not appeared on WWE TV of late due to the health concerns stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic and there are is no known timeframe with regards to his return.

WWE will be moving forward without the leader of 'The Artist Collective' and a new IC Champion will be crowned soon, irrespective of Zayn voicing his displeasure on social media.

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