Booker T says Sami Zayn winning the title was wrestling done properly, and that the promo beforehand is what sold it. Zayn beat CM Punk for the Undisputed WWE Championship on the September 11 SmackDown in Mexico City. Booker gave his verdict on his Hall of Fame podcast.
“I loved the promo that Sami cut before the match, because it was just so wrestling. It just had everything about it,” Booker said. “It just had that throwback feel for me as far as wrestling goes.”
The part he kept coming back to was the perception Zayn had to beat.
“For somebody like Sami to win it after people thought, well, he was just a transitional champion, and then for him to get it back, it just, I love wrestling, man,” he said. “When it’s done right. And I think this was done very, very, very well.”
Booker said he has watched Zayn change himself more than once, starting from a young babyface he thought was going to get badly hurt.
“I watched that kid when he first got on the main roster. He had that babyface fire, and he would do the jump where he would go through the two bottom turnbuckles all the way to the floor,” Booker said. “I was like, man, this kid’s gonna kill himself. Thank God he stopped doing that. I’m sure his shin bones got all messed up from that many, many times.”
What impressed him is that the version doing it now bears no resemblance.
“He was willing to show the world that hey, I’m willing to do this to let you people know I’m different than anybody else. And he transitioned from that to this look,” Booker said. “I always say, if you don’t know how to change with the times, the times will pass you by. And Sami has been able to totally change himself throughout.”
He included the comedy years in that.
“Even when he was doing the stuff with the Bloodline, a lot of it was comedic. It was so funny,” Booker said. “But I tell people that when you can’t do that in professional wrestling, you’re missing the boat. You don’t understand what’s going on.”
Booker called him a Swiss Army knife and said the value is in being able to do anything asked.
“He’s going to be a player. He’s going to get the work done,” he said. “He’s got this far, not by osmosis. He didn’t slip on a banana peel and make it this far. He’s definitely gone out there and worked his butt off to put himself in a certain position. You play the role, and you get rewarded.”
He also made a point about what the title actually is.
“Not the championship, the title. Not the belt, the title,” Booker said. “When you walk to Sami’s office, on the door it has champion Sami Zayn. That right there speaks volumes. They can never take that away from you.”
Asked whether the win was a long-term plan, Booker said he had no idea, and that it often does not matter anymore.
“I don’t know if it was a long-term plan or not, but sometimes plans change,” he said.
His example came from his own day job. Booker works as an announcer on NXT and pointed to a tag title change there.
“Like Hank and Tank. They came in to work a match last month and they won the titles, because we thought, hey, tonight is the right time. It just feels right. Let’s pull the trigger on this,” Booker said. “Somebody might have come with an idea, and somebody said, yeah, let’s do that.”
He said the process behind it is not what it used to be.
“It’s not like it used to be, where the show is pretty much written and one person has to sign off on it, like Vince did back in the day,” he said. “Vince would see, they would write the show, and then right before, he would rewrite it again. It’s not like that anymore. I think ideas are coming from so many different places, and I think it’s a matter of taking those good ideas and using them.”
Booker then told a version of the same thing happening to him, and how he responded to being cast as a placeholder.
“Someone didn’t bring their gear. Rick Martel forgot, didn’t bring his gear, and he had no boots or anything,” he said. “And they say, well, we’re gonna put the title on you tonight, knowing that I was gonna be the transitional to drop it to Rick Martel somewhere. But in my mind, that was never gonna happen.”
His reaction, he said, was immediate.
“I said, man, I’m gonna take this belt and run. Opportunity knocked,” Booker said. “That wasn’t supposed to happen that night. It just happened, and it put me in a great position.”
