Sami Zayn is a top star in WWE, but the journey was not always easy.
The current reigning tag champion appeared on the After The Bell podcast and detailed some odd mindsets that were pushed on him and other talents when they were in NXT. Zayn says that everyone was aimed at each other like they were enemies.
I remember when I got to WWE, it was NXT or something like that, it was very much the mentality of, ‘you should be furious that you’re here. You should want to get out of here. You should want to get on the road. Everyone around you is your enemy, they are all vying for your spot. This is a competition. You have to be the best to get out of here. If you don’t want to be the best, you shouldn’t even work here.’
Zayn recalls a line told to the NXT class about wanting to be the next John Cena, and how if they weren’t striving for that they should even be there. He remembers thinking that it was utterly insane to try and push that on wrestlers.
I remember a line something to the extent of, ‘If you don’t want to be the next John Cena, you shouldn’t even be here.’ I remember hearing that and being completely [mouth agape]. ‘What? This is insanity.’ Let’s just say we’re in a room with 100 people, let’s just say the next John Cena is in this room. There’s only one, so the other 99 people in this room should be miserable at all times trying to aspire to be that person? What kind of insanity is that?
Elsewhere in the interview, Zayn spoke about his involvement in the Bloodline story in WWE and how at one point he was getting impatient at the direction that they were going. You can read about that here.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)