Sami Zayn Feels ‘Detached’ After WWE Elimination Chamber, Talks Smackdown Promo

Sami Zayn was feeling a bit strange after his match at Elimination Chamber, as he noted in the post-show press conference. Zayn, who battled Roman Reigns in the main event of last night’s show, appeared at the post-show press event and you can see some highlights below (per Fightful):

On how he’s feeling after the match: “I want to apologize in advance because I’m feeling very strange. I know some of these answers are going to be, maybe not what you would expect. I feel very strange in that, I feel very strangely detached, which I don’t know if people want to hear. You want to hear, ‘Wow, I did this. It was awesome. I’m riding high.’ I normally am, but I’m feeling very strange, strangely detached, and I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. On a cognitive level, I know what we just did. I think I still have to see it back and see how it played.”

“That’s a big lesson I’ve taken out of this storyline with the Bloodline over the past nine, ten months. I’ll feel good about something I’ve done, but I have to see how it played. What were the angles, did they get in tight, did the emotion come through. All that kind of stuff. I’ll see how it played. If you asked me these questions tomorrow, I might have very different answers for you, but I feel strange. That might be the recurring theme for some of these answers. The other part might be, it was kind of an unhappy ending tonight. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t affect me. Of course, it’s unbelievable…this is a dream come true. You ever have a dream, it’s going in a certain direction, and then you wake up right before. That’s kind of what this was. It was like a dream, it’s a dream come true, it’s surreal, it’s everything you could ever want, and a storybook ending obviously has a certain ending to it. That’s not what happened tonight. I can’t act like there’s not a small part of me that is like, ‘ahhhh, I wish I could have given that ending.’ To the people, to the story, to myself, my family, my friends, to Montreal. I know what this is, we all know what this is, but some of this stuff is real. You just kind of dream of that happy ending. So close, but no cigar. Maybe that’s a small part of this strange feeling that I keep coming back to. I don’t know. It’s also, looking out into the crowd after the three count. Seeing their faces, I was like, ‘Oh, this is not fun.’ They’re hurt. They were so deflated, but not in a storyline sort of deflated.”

On his promo on Friday’s Smackdown: “I had a bunch of stuff that I wanted to say, but then you also have to assess the situation you’re in and adapt. They were giving me a lot, and I’m not about to stop them if they’re doing that, right? That would be a strange choice, as a performer. ‘Hey, you’re screaming a lot. Let’s hit pause on that.’ Obviously, we have to roll with it. I think it created a very special, a very memorable reaction, a memorable segment.”

“I don’t want to drone on about the Bloodline storyline, but what a magic thing, to have so many memorable segments. We’re in the era of content, not just with WWE, but in everything. You have a cell phone in your hand that has access to every piece of information ever, in the palm of your hand, it’s insane. What I think is harder than doing something good now, because we have unbelievable talent now. Everybody is pretty good. The bar has been raised. Being good is not good enough anymore. The harder thing to do in the age of content is doing something memorable. Something people are going to remember, never mind in a week or two, that’s hard enough on its own, but with this Bloodline thing, if I may be so bold to toot my own horn and our own horn for everybody in front of the camera, behind the camera, and the performers who are executing this. I think we’ve walked away from this story, and it’s not even done, with so many memorable segments, TV segments, that people will remember five, ten years down the road. I hope that Montreal ovation is one of those. It’s not every day you see a performer stand in the ring for, somebody timed it, it was like five minutes and 22 seconds. There is a Quebec historian here, Pat Laprade, in the history of the Bell Centre, it’s the longest ovation in the history of the building. Uninterrupted ovation. That’s pretty special. I think people will remember that. I had to kind of adapt on the fly. There was more that I wanted to say. Part of it was things I wanted to say to say to the city. Part of it was things to advance the storyline. Part of it was touching on what I did with Cody (Rhodes) and acknowledging the self-doubt that I showed on Raw a few days prior, but when you’re standing and surrounded by that (ovation), it’s like, ‘let’s just punch them with the good stuff here and take the love that they’re giving,’ which I very much appreciate.”