Sami Zayn has publicly defended the Gingerbread Man storyline running through his WWE United States Championship program with Trick Williams and Lil Yachty, telling Huge POP! that he thought the angle “was a good piece of business” despite online criticism and reports of internal creative pushback.
The storyline has spanned multiple weeks of WWE SmackDown TV, both pre- and post-WrestleMania 42, with Zayn in the Gingerbread Man costume in one segment and Lil Yachty in it in others. The funeral for the Gingerbread Man closed the May 8 episode of SmackDown, with Lil Yachty hidden in the costume to ambush Zayn when Zayn arrived to interrupt Trick’s eulogy.
Speaking on Huge POP!, Zayn split his read of the angle by week.
“I don’t know. I think context is kind of key for all of these things, right? A couple of weeks ago, I think these were maybe back-to-back weeks. I get the timeline messed up sometimes in my head, but the one week when Trick and Lil Yachty had came out with the Gingerbread Man, and then I ended up being under the outfit and attacked them with the cane and all that. I thought that was great, and then the following week, I just had the Gingerbread Man mannequin in the ring and beat up the Gingerbread mannequin. So, in both cases, a Gingerbread Man is kind of, I don’t wanna say the focal part of it but, kind of, right? There’s this serious WrestleMania program for the United States Championship that involves a Gingerbread Man. On paper, sounds kind of silly. But the week we did it, where it was me under the suit, and I’m dancing, and then I clock those guys, I thought that was great.”
Zayn was honest that not every week of the angle has landed the same.
“Then the following week, with the mannequin, it felt a little bit more lifeless to me. Not as great, maybe a little silly. I don’t know. It’s kind of week-to-week and it’s all in execution so I don’t think the concept of involving a Gingerbread Man on its own is ridiculous because this is pro wrestling and we do all kinds of fun things that maybe, you know, if you were on the internet and you were scrolling Twitter or whatever, and you saw a clip of guys in a ring with a Gingerbread Man, you’d be like what? But, in the world of wrestling, there’s context, and it kind of makes sense, and sometimes, these things get really over, actually.”
Zayn went deeper on the week he thought worked, the segment where the Gingerbread Man arrived with a tour bus, dapped up Trick, had his own locker room, and then turned out to be Zayn under the suit waiting to crack a cane across Yachty’s back.
“So, I don’t think the concept of the Gingerbread Man by itself is ridiculous or silly. It’s all in execution and on a week-to-week basis. But I thought that week where the Gingerbread Man showed up with the bus and he was dapping up Trick, and then he had his own locker room, and then I’m dancing and having all this fun, then I’m just part of the celebration because the Gingerbread Man is there to troll me essentially and make fun of me, and I whack them with a cane and I break the cane on Yachty’s back, and that cane was legitimately made of I don’t know what, oak or something. It was so hard. I don’t know how it broke. I felt that was all a good piece of business, and it was all fun so I don’t take a look at things like a Gingerbread Man, and dismiss them.”
Zayn told Huge POP! he has pitched longer-term uses for the character himself, including the Gingerbread Man going to work for him after the Trick Williams program ends, and the character continuing to appear in his storylines beyond the U.S. Title feud.
