Sami Zayn is one of the favorites to walk out of this Sunday’s Money In The Bank with a guaranteed contract for a shot at the WWE Championship. The Underdog From The Underground joined FOX Sports to discuss his preparation for the MitB ladder match as well as an evaluation of his career on the main roster.
The SmackDown Live star says that the mental drain of being on the main roster was something that he wasn’t completely prepared for. He went on to give advice to every NXT star who might one day make it to the big show.
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“I guess I’d just be ready more for the highs and lows. You know, very few people – if any – come in here and just have a very linear trajectory to the top. It becomes very much… there’s highs and lows. You take two steps forward and you take a step back. Five steps forward, three steps back. It’s not a linear, chronological ascension to the top.
You’ve got to kind of get mentally prepared for that. I guess that’d be my advice for anybody from NXT who is going to come up to the main roster. Once you’re prepared to understand that it’s not always going to be smooth sailing, I think it makes the ride a lot more… I don’t want to say ‘bearable,’ but it makes it a lot easier for you to handle it mentally. For as tough as what we do is physically, the mental aspect can be almost as tough, if not tougher.”
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As Sami prepares for his second Money In The Bank match, he also told the story of his first ever ladder match.
“I think it was in a gymnasium in the town that I lived in, in front of about 80 people. I want to say it was in… late 2002. It was a three-way ladder match. Definitely did some things I probably shouldn’t have done that night, you know, just taking really unnecessary risks. When I think back on it now, think about the 15-year toll I put on my body, I think about some of those early nights when I did way, way more than I should have. Took way bigger risks than I should have. But I feel like that, having that missing screw loose, I feel like that almost goes hand-in-hand with having the passion to make it this far.
And if you almost don’t go through with that… I can’t say that for sure, because certainly other people haven’t done that kind of stuff to still make it far, but I feel like, again, that just goes with my trajectory. I have to take those crazy risks and and do the crazy, stupid things to kind of learn to understand when to do them and when to not do them, and eventually get smarter and better at what I’m doing. Good enough to line myself up here, which is where I’m at now, so I guess I wouldn’t change any of it.”
As for his mentality now, Sami says he goes into a ladder match with a very different goal than simply taking risks.
“Well it’s a very different game, because also my mentality has changed since 2002.
I think I was a lot more drawn, especially back then, to the risks and to the high-flying, high-impact stuff. And it’s not to say that that is gone, it’s not gone, obviously. You see a lot of my matches will have a lot of high-impact stuff, but it’s really to me more about the dramatics, and I think that’s really the name of the game when you get to the WWE. It’s really more about the story and the hunt and the chase and everything else, and I think that’s where the real drama is and the real connections are made with the audience.
Don’t get me wrong. Jeff Hardy doing that Swanton off the ladder the first time is something so memorable and you’ll replay that a thousand times over, but really… you know you probably don’t remember every single move that those guys did back then in those TLC matches – those guys being the Hardyz and Dudleys and Edge and Christian. You don’t remember all the crazy moves or the crazy risks they took, you just remember kind of how the matches made you feel, and the ride the match took you on. And I think ultimately that’s more important than any singular move or risk or whatever you want to call it.”
Money In The Bank will take place Sunday, June 18th live from the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, MO.
