Sami Zayn’s first chance at winning WWE’s top championship came on January 24, 2016. While it wasn’t your traditional one-on-one contest — that year’s Royal Rumble winner would also be named champion — it’s a date that sticks out in Zayn’s mind, even now, a decade removed.
“You’re talking about a decade of challenging for a championship,” Zayn told Uncrowned.
“I’d have to do some research and see who has challenged for it for that long before finally coming up and winning it.”
To put it into perspective, the winner of that Royal Rumble, Paul “Triple H” Levesque, is currently five years removed from his last WWE match and is now the company’s chief content officer — aka Zayn’s boss. To put Zayn’s decade-long pursuit into even further context, the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics measured the median employee tenure to be 3.9 years. Zayn has been chasing WWE’s biggest prize for more than twice that period.
In the time from his first televised challenge to Saturday — his 10th attempt, which takes place at WWE Night of Champions 2026 in Saudi Arabia — Zayn has strung together a résumé that can stand toe-to-toe with seemingly anyone in the industry.
He pulled off one of the all-time great gimmick matches in WrestleMania history against Johnny Knoxville and the “Jackass” crew. He — alongside longtime friend Kevin Owens — defeated The Usos to win the WWE Tag Team Championships in the main event of WrestleMania 39. A year later, he captured gold at WrestleMania again, stunning Gunther to win the Intercontinental Championship. He became an integral and indispensable part of arguably the greatest angle in wrestling history with The Bloodline.
“I personally pride myself on my versatility as a performer,” Zayn said. “I think it’s something that I’ve always valued in this job and something I have always strived for from a very early age — I wanted to be able to do everything and anything that’s asked of me. Open a show in Mexico, main-event a show in Japan, or do a comedy match at WrestleMania in front of 60,000 people — whatever it is, I am going to be very good at it. It was always my goal. I do think versatility is my calling card.”
Zayn’s versatility has been on full display in the first half of this year alone.
The 41-year-old opened the year by challenging Drew McIntyre for the Undisputed WWE Championship at the 2026 Royal Rumble. It was Zayn’s ninth try, and with the show being held in Saudi Arabia — where Zayn is arguably the most popular superstar on WWE’s roster — there was a compelling case to be made for the title change.
Although he came up short, Zayn managed to remain a focal point of “SmackDown,” winning the United States Championship and defending it against Trick Williams at WrestleMania 42.
Now, he’s back in the main-event picture.
“I do see that there is value in being someone who can move up and down the card, but the double-edged sword about that is that fans have a subconscious idea of an unspoken totem pole with WWE and talent,” Zayn said. “Sometimes it’s hard for them to place you and see you in a certain light when you are sliding up and down the card. Maybe that would be less confusing if I had won the world championship a time or two, but because I’ve never won it, it feels like the one drawback of going back and forth is I have had a hard time cementing myself in some fans’ eyes as a perennial main-eventer or world title contender.”
This time around, Zayn also finds himself in self-described “uncharted territory.” Zayn has spent the majority of his 13-year run in WWE as a babyface, but after his loss to McIntyre earlier this year, Zayn began to wade into relatively new waters as a character. Part babyface, part heel, Zayn became wrestling’s equivalent to a Gray Jedi. One week he’ll hear boos, the next week — like we have seen during WWE’s current international tour — fans will sing his song and reach for high-fives as he walks down the ramp as if he actually is “The Last Real Good Guy”
“A lot of it is by design, obviously,” Zayn said. “In this case, I am trying something new, but the goal is to split them. In that respect, it’s working. I find it kind of thrilling to be in this uncharted territory. My actions in the ring are going to be perceived one way and reacted to in a different way based on where we are. It’s exhilarating to not know how it is going to play out week to week. I find that really, really fun.”
Zayn’s prolonged championship pursuit isn’t something new in the world of professional wrestling. We’ve seen plenty of examples of stars who have extended waits before becoming a promotion’s top guy, which often make for extremely memorable moments when they actually do get over that proverbial hump.
Legends like Mankind, Diamond Dallas Page, Daniel Bryan and Kofi Kingston are just some of the names that come to mind when thinking about truly iconic championship wins. After coming so close so many times, particularly as an overwhelming babyface, Zayn isn’t ready to put himself in that category just yet, opting to stay grounded in more of an “if” rather than “when” scenario.
“We do this sometimes, and I’ve heard one or two superstars say this in other interviews in the past, but it’s not something we say a lot,” he said. “We always want to talk about the importance of these moments and how much they mean to us, and it’s true — but I will say, sometimes when you talk about a moment too much or you hype it up too much in your head, it fails to live up to your expectations when it actually happens.
“I genuinely can’t predict the feeling, and I genuinely can’t predict the fan reaction. So you just do your best and be present in the moment, to tell the best stories and take people on the best possible rides.”
Zayn will share the ring on Saturday with Cody Rhodes — the defending Undisputed WWE Champion — and Gunther. Rhodes enters the match as the clear babyface — Zayn doesn’t necessarily buy into the “Cody fatigue” internet storyline — and Gunther the clear heel. He’ll be the only one in the ring who hasn’t held one of WWE’s top championships.
“If it was a mile away from me and I just never thought it was really that attainable, it probably wouldn’t bother me at all,” Zayn said. “At this point, what bothers me is how close I’ve come, how all my peers have done it, and I haven’t. All the people that I think are on my level of talent have done it. And for my level of talent, that I haven’t done it, that’s the only reason it drives me as crazy as it has — and it does — is because it’s just so close. I can smell it. I can taste it. It’s right there. So it becomes like, ‘Why not me?'”
That answer alone is what makes Zayn — or any professional wrestler — so great at their craft. You can tell there’s some kayfabe in how he’s talking about his championship pursuit, but there’s at least equal parts — if not more — true emotion behind the response.
“I’ve done so many incredible things,” Zayn said. “I’ve had so many incredible matches. I told so many incredible stories. I’ve made fans feel such an incredible range of emotions. What a privilege, what a gift. You could not ask for anything more in this business.”
“[The championship is] like a little validation. It’s a feather in the cap. It’s the cherry on top for me, but it’s not the whole cake. If I actually think about it too much, I would get overwhelmed with emotion. The career I’ve had, the life it’s given me, life experience, the professional experience it has given me is so immeasurably great, that you’d have to be a sick person to go, ‘Yeah, but I never won the championship,'”
For anyone, in any walk of life, there needs to be some degree of ambition — we just don’t have it all play out on a weekly basis on national television, and it cannot be the sole defining factor.
“I’ll get a little bit more broad here, not just about the WWE Championship, but in life in general,” Zayn said. “I think you’re going to make yourself sick if you live and die and judge your life, your livelihood, or whatever, by one goal, thinking you’ll get a forever stain if you don’t accomplish it. I don’t think that’s a healthy way to look at anything. I don’t think it’s a healthy way to live.”
Ten years may seem like a long time, but Zayn’s been wrestling for almost 25. Ten shots at a championship may seem like a lot, but Zayn’s wrestled well over 1,000 matches. Win or lose on Saturday, neither us nor Zayn should look at this body of work any differently than we currently do.
On a show dubbed Night of Champions, Zayn will enter and exit as one — even if he doesn’t have the belt.
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