Sami Zayn On Reason Behind Name-Dropping AEW On Raw Back In 2019
Sami Zayn did something that was unexpected live on WWE TV just days after All Elite Wrestling held their first pay-per-view Double or Nothing event back in 2019.
He name-dropped AEW during a segment on Monday Night Raw, which would be the first time the rival promotion’s name was mentioned on WWE programming.
The first and unfortunately the only edition of the Electric Chair segment saw Sami Zayn taking unfiltered questions from members of the audience and answering them while sitting on an apparently real electric chair. The segment aired on the May 27, 2019 episode of Raw, just two days after Double or Nothing.
Sami Zayn recalled the segment in an interview with Sportskeeda, stating that he anticipated that questions about the AEW would be submitted by the audience as the debut of the promotion was topical at the time, but to his surprise nobody went for the low-hanging fruit.
“So it was right on everybody’s mind. It was super, super fresh and I think they had just announced this TV deal. They had just announced that this wasn’t just going to be a pay-per-view. This is going to be a competitor and all this sort of stuff. And they tell me that we’re doing this segment where it’s legitimately, you know, unplanned questions and anybody could ask anything. So at the time this was the number one topic in the wrestling world. So you kind of expected to be asked about it,” Sami Zayn said.
Zayn revealed that the idea behind the Electric Chair segment was that it was supposed to an unscripted and unpredictable segment. Seeing the questions he got, Zayn felt that it doesn’t have the risky vibes that was the point of the experimental segment. So instead, he took it upon himself to mention AEW on the otherwise lifeless segment.
“As I was out there, I was like, this doesn’t have these vibes, these questions are too sterile. So I felt like it was upon me, it was incumbent upon me, to sort of make it controversial. And the fact that we’re talking about it now, all this time later, you know I hate to say I was right, but I kind of think I was right to do it,” Sami Zayn explained.
While Sami Zayn was able to elicit a reaction of shock by viewers, it wasn’t so favorable for him backstage and the Electric Chair segment was nixed just after its debut.
