WWE superstar Sami Zayn was a recent guest on the Gettin Better with Ron Funches podcast to discuss a backstage argument he got into with a WWE writer, and how the former I.C. champion instantly apologized admitting he was having a bad day. Highlights from the interview are below.
Says he blew up on a writer but instantly apologized:
Not to pull the curtain back too far here but, literally last week at WWE television on SmackDown, I was having a real bad week. I was really frustrated about a lot of little things and they were just adding up and I could feel myself getting angrier and angrier throughout the day and I was really working on reining it in, and then finally, a guy who I was — one of the writers was helping me with something, came in and he gave me something and it was like the straw that broke the camel’s back and I kinda lost it on him a little bit and as I was losing it on him, I was apologizing because I was saying, ‘This is not directed at you. This is misdirected anger. I’m sorry, I can’t deal with this right now. It’s too much. I just can’t put up with this right now’ and I kinda talked down to him, but I immediately apologized but I still felt like, ‘Ah, it caught me a little bit’ because as I did it, I knew I’m talking this way to this guy because I know I can get away with talking this way to this guy, right? I couldn’t talk to Vince McMahon the way I just talked to this guy and my whole thing is I don’t ever wanna talk one way to somebody that I wouldn’t wanna talk to somebody else. That is again, sort of this principle thing that I have for myself. Just because you can abuse someone or treat someone worse because they’re lower on this made-up totem pole, doesn’t mean you should, right? If that’s something you believe. It’s something I believe and I think we all believe that on a philosophical level or on a conceptual level, yeah, we can all agree on that but in practice and in reality, you see it every day.
On advice he’s given to fresh talents coming into the WWE system:
So this is something I’ve been saying to some wrestlers who struggle sometimes the way I kind of did when they get to WWE: I told them you almost have to look at WWE for example, or like big time show business type stuff, movies. Maybe it’s all the same. I think it is but whatever. I don’t know for sure. It’s almost two separate art forms. It’s like if you’re a painter and I give you a blank canvas and all the colors you could ever want and I go, ‘Paint me a masterpiece.’ Alright, if we hire ten great artists, you’ll probably get ten great paintings. But working with WWE and working within all these constraints and working within a very specific framework, it’s almost like being a great painter and being handed a coloring book with three or four different colors and say, ‘Okay, here you go. Make sure to color within the lines but what you do with it is up to you,’ and anybody — I’m not saying anybody but any great painter could paint a great piece on a blank canvas. But how good can you make this coloring book look. It’s like a totally different — it’s almost a different art form. It’s how good could you work with handcuffs on? How good could you work within this really, really tight box when we gotta check five or six different goals in three or four minutes and still make it good, you know what I’m saying? It almost became a totally different art form that I don’t think everybody can do. You can be a great wrestler and still not be a great WWE wrestler because it’s almost a different — it’s almost a different ballpark all together.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)