Sami Zayn is one of, if not the hottest and most popular Star in the WWE today and due to his immense popularity there were plans at one point over the past several weeks for him to be a part of the main event of WrestleMania 39 between the Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns and “The American Nightmare” Cody Rhodes for The Tribal Chief’s Undisputed WWE Universal Championship to make it into a Triple Threat Match.
A number of top WWE officials, including WWE Chairman Vince McMahon and Triple H felt that Sami isn’t a WrestleMania main eventer, which is why they pushed through with their original plans and had Roman Reigns defeat Sami Zayn at Elimination Chamber to retain his Undisputed WWE Universal Championship.
Dave Meltzer noted on a recent edition of the Wrestling Observer Radio Program that WWE was concerned with the fans chanting Sami Zayn during Cody Rhodes’ promo segment and that is the reason why the WWE kept it short by having Paul Heyman come out in mere seconds. Meltzer also noted that the company did everything in their power to not allow the live fans a chance to start chanting or anything like that and what they did was designed to do exactly that because there was a feeling that if the fans on RAW last Monday night started a Sami Zayn chant, then it would hurt Cody Rhodes’ momentum going into this April’s WrestleMania 39.
This is what Dave Meltzer said:
“They didn’t kill the story by having him loose. When Cody was out there…the stuff with Cody and Heyman…they were very concerned about Sami chants, which is one of the reasons why they got Heyman out there in seconds.”
“They did not want Cody in there by himself because they thought that, I mean it didn’t happen, but boy they did everything in their power to make sure they kept that moving, they did not allow the audience a chance to start chanting or anything like that, it was just back-and-forth. It was designed to give the audience no chance to chant that because of the feeling that if they did it would hurt Cody’s momentum.” “And perhaps it would, and then it could create that groundswell which is exactly what they don’t want right now, but it didn’t happen. It was a little on the flat side.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for transcribing the quotes.
