Sami Zayn On His Competitive Dynamic With Kevin Owens, How Owens Learned English

Sami Zayn recently discussed his longstanding friendship and competitive dynamic with Kevin Owens plus more in a new interview. Zayn appeared on Cheap Heat and also discussed how Owens learned to speak English; you can check out some highlights below courtesy of Wrestling Inc:

On being competitive with Owens: “I think a lot of Kevin Owens and myself, a lot of our success, we had a pretty healthy, I would say, competition with each other and I think we drove each other to get a little bit better. And every time I was kind of getting some steam, he’d start doing some stuff and he’d be accomplishing some stuff, and it kind of made up that game.

“So I think there is a healthy level of give and take competition there. I also kind of reject the idea that competition is what drives everything and to look at life as a competition, or to look at life, you know, Miz is my coworker and Logan Paul is somebody I worked with. I’m not looking at them as the enemy, you know? Let’s all calm down here.”

On how Owens learned English: “We speak in English, but French is his mother tongue. It’s amazing, actually, Kevin doesn’t have the Quebec, the Francophone accent, whatsoever. It’s pretty astonishing because {talks in a Quebec accent} normally when you hear a Quebecer talking English, this is their accent, they talk like that. And I’m not making fun, that’s just, there is an accent, he has zero.

“And the mind-blowing thing, I don’t know if you know this but he’s said it in other interviews, he didn’t speak a word of English till he was 11. He learned English by watching wrestling. Jim Ross taught him English, so he thought that certain wrestling-isms were actually normal words. Like, he’d be like, ‘Oh yeah, that was a real slobberknocker,’ as if it’s a common word, you know? Wrestling actually taught him an entire language.”