Sami Zayn Explains His Namedropping of AEW During Electric Chair Segment on WWE Raw

– During a recent interview with Cultaholic Wrestling, WWE Superstar Sami Zayn was asked about name-dropping AEW during an on-air WWE Raw promo segment back in May 2019. It was two days after AEW held its first event, Double or Nothing 2019. Below are some highlights (via WrestlingInc.com):

Sami Zayn on the timing of the segment where he mentioned AEW: “What happened is the timing of that is sometimes forgotten. You’re referring to the electric chair segment which was a totally unscripted segment. The timing of that segment was very interesting because it was the next day after AEW had just had their first-ever pay-per-view. It was a very hot topic at the time. It was hot off the heels of their first pay-per-view and it was hot off the announcement that AEW was going to be a company.”

Zayn on why he brought up AEW: “It was so new and so fresh and we felt that it was going to be on everybody’s minds. I felt like it was bound to come up, and it kind of weirdly didn’t. At that point in the segment, some of the questions I thought would’ve been a lot more provocative because it was unscripted. While I was out there, I felt like a lot of the questions were a bit flat. Me using my judgment, I figured this needed some pizzazz, so I brought it up myself.”

On how it still gets talked about three years later: “When I got back it wasn’t so much that it came up, but the way it came up. The way I sort of addressed it, when it wasn’t really needed to be addressed. All this to say that in my defense, the fact that we’re still talking about it three years later tells me that my instincts were right. We needed something memorable to make this a shocking segment, but unfortunately, that was the death blow of the electric chair segment because it was never to be repeated again.”