Sami Zayn explains why he keeps his personal life private in the wrestling world.
Zayn’s rise to the main event scene over the last year led to fans learning more about his family, especially around the time of Elimination Chamber in February. His wife participated in an interview with WWE and even made a front-row appearance for his main event in Montreal.
During a recent interview with Ryan Satin on Out of Character, the current WWE Tag Team Champion opened up about his apprehension toward exposing his private life to wrestling fans.
“Yeah, I was apprehensive for a very long time. And I still am,” Zayn said. “I’m still an overall pretty private person. I don’t know, something about it feels wrong to me. I guess this is a layered question… First and foremost, my wife, my child, any family member I have, they didn’t sign up for this, I did. So over the last 20 years, I built a certain armor to where you could hear certain negative comments and you can kind of deflect. They bounce right off you. And even then, every now and then, you’ll come across something where it gets to you.”
Get Back
Zayn then referenced The Beatles’ Get Back documentary. There’s a scene where Paul McCartney reads a printed negative review. That showed Zayn that even the biggest rock band from before the internet age was affected by negative press and didn’t have that “armor” to deflect.
“So it doesn’t matter how good you get at this and how long you’ve been doing it. I don’t care who you are, when people are talking about you, you’re curious to hear what they’re saying,” Zayn continued. “You can tune out most negative comments, but every now and then one will get to you. I’m used to that even though by and large the internet has been very nice to me throughout my entire career. The point being, it’s still something I signed up for and it’s part of the territory.
“So for someone who didn’t ask for it and who’s probably not equipped emotionally to handle total strangers making ruthless comments about their existence, about their appearance, about anything, I just don’t want to subject people in my life to that.”
What You See Is What You Get
Zayn also noted that he doesn’t want to have his popularity based on how much of his personal life he reveals to fans.
“There’s the other aspect. Not everything needs to be commodified in a way that I’m sort of using it to leverage for popularity. Like, ‘Oh, here, let me give you a window into my personal life so that you can like me more, so you can connect with me more.’ I don’t know, I’m a bit old school in that. ‘Here’s the performance. Here’s what I’m presenting to you, and that’s what you get.’ Whether you like or dislike me will hopefully be based by and large on what I’m presenting or anything else.”
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If you use any quotes from this article, please credit Out of Character with a h/t to WrestleZone for the transcription.
