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Sami Zayn made his long-awaited return to a WWE ring on the April 8 episode of Raw, facing Finn Balor in a losing effort for the Intercontinental Championship.
The former NXT champion last competed in a match way back in June 2018 at the Money In The Bank event, where he lost against Bobby Lashley, and he has spent the last 10 months on the road to recovery from double shoulder surgery.
It looked as though Kevin Owens’ former sidekick had returned to WWE as a good guy during his match with Balor, having made a typically eccentric entrance before getting the crowd on his side during his post-match promo.
However, he then turned against the audience by saying that, although he realises how much everybody missed him, he did not miss them or the “toxic WWE environment” during his absence from the squared circle.
The last time we saw Zayn, he was eight months into his first heel run as a WWE Superstar. His momentum declined following his WWE Championship storyline in early 2018 but, along with Owens, he remained one of the most entertaining people on Raw before he was forced to undergo surgery.
So, with fans seemingly behind Zayn, let’s take a look at five theories why WWE decided to bring him back as a heel.
#5 He was more relevant as a heel
Before Johnny Gargano established himself as the biggest babyface in NXT history, there was Sami Zayn.
Known during his early days in NXT as “The Underdog from the Underground”, Zayn was by far the most popular Superstar in WWE’s developmental brand throughout 2014, and he was part of one of the greatest moments in NXT history when he finally won the NXT Championship from Neville in December 2014 at TakeOver: R Evolution.
The problems for Zayn started when he joined the main roster in 2015. Following an injury on his debut, he returned in 2016 and struggled to solidify himself as a credible title challenger during his time as a babyface on Raw and SmackDown Live. While he was still popular, he was mostly portrayed as just another mid-carder.
That all changed in October 2017 when Zayn turned heel, aligning with Kevin Owens in the process, to kick-start the best main-roster run of his WWE career so far.
Perhaps WWE opted to keep him as a heel for the simple reason that it worked so well before, so why change it?
#4 Move away from the Kevin Owens storyline
Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens had a storied history before they both made it to WWE, so it was only natural that their paths crossed early on in their WWE careers during their time in NXT.
In fact, on Owens’ very first night with the brand (the aforementioned TakeOver: R Evolution event), he attacked his former best friend. He then won the NXT Championship from Zayn in early 2015 before feuding with him on Raw and SmackDown throughout the first half of 2016.
Fast forward to 2017 and both men were traded to SmackDown Live in the Superstar Shake-Up, which could only mean one thing: they were, once again, put together in a storyline, this time as allies rather than enemies.
With Owens now a babyface and Zayn a heel, it is about time that WWE ended their association with each other, at least for the next year, by having one guy on Raw and one on SmackDown Live following next week’s Superstar Shake-Up.
#3 Freshen up the current group of WWE heels
It is very difficult in modern-day WWE for Superstars to become legitimate heels who the audience dislikes. Even if somebody shows non-stop heel tendencies (say, Samoa Joe or Alexa Bliss), fans can still appreciate how good they are at their job, so they often receive cheers despite being bad guys.
In Sami Zayn’s case, he was very entertaining during his run as a heel from October 2017 to June 2018, but he also had the ability to get fans to boo him no matter who he was up against.
Looking through the WrestleMania 35 card, Randy Orton, Shane McMahon, Daniel Bryan, Samoa Joe, Drew McIntyre, Bobby Lashley and Baron Corbin were the only full-time male heels who competed in matches on the main show.
With the Superstar Shake-Up on the horizon, WWE desperately needs to freshen up the way that the heels are presented, especially on Raw (the McIntyre, Lashley and Corbin alliance went on for far too long), so heel Zayn would be a welcomed addition to either brand.
#2 Storyline continuation
It seems that every time a WWE Superstar spends a long time out of action, they are given a hero’s reception upon their return. It even happened on a lesser scale on this week’s Raw when Alexa Bliss, who has not competed since January, received cheers when her music hit and she was in her ring gear as opposed to a ‘Moment of Bliss’ suit or dress.
It also happened, of course, with Sami Zayn, who soaked in the adulation of the fans in Brooklyn before hilariously turning against them following his defeat to Finn Balor.
There is often no reason given why Superstars return and they suddenly became babyfaces. Kevin Owens, for example, came back to WWE in February 2019 as a good guy, despite the fact that he had been a bad guy for the previous four years.
With Zayn, at least there is some storyline continuation and he is picking up right where he left off before his injury.
#1 Title opportunities
Sami Zayn held the NXT Championship for the one and only time in his career from December 2014 to February 2015. Since then, he has challenged for several main-roster titles, including the WWE Championship and United States Championship, but he is yet to win gold on Raw or SmackDown Live.
A total of eight titles changed hands at WrestleMania 35 (WWE keeps saying seven – the number is actually eight if you include both the Raw and SmackDown Women’s Championships), and the high number of changes is noteworthy because all five of the new male title holders are babyfaces (Tony Nese, Curt Hawkins & Zack Ryder, Finn Balor, Seth Rollins and Kofi Kingston).
With no rematch clause in WWE these days, all five of those new champions are going to have Superstars queuing up to face them in the coming weeks.
If Zayn returned as a good guy, he would have been unlikely to be a realistic title winner any time soon (granted, he faced Balor on Raw, but he was never going to win, was he?). Now that he is a bad guy, he could potentially challenge for a world title at some point this summer.
