Backstage Reaction To Sami Zayn’s ‘Special’ SmackDown Promo

WWE

On last night’s SmackDown show in Montreal, Sami Zayn returned home to cut a passionate promo ahead of his Undisputed WWE Universal Championship match with Roman Reigns.

Zayn came out to his original WWE theme song, a long time request from WWE fans prior to his face turn.

Fightful Select (subscription required) has provided more infomation on the backstage details and reaction to the segment.

The report notes that Zayn’s segment was always designed to be just one segment, and that Zayn’s old theme song was brought back due to heavy requests from fans online.

The segment was produced by Michael Hayes, who has been responsible for producing a lot of WWE’s high level segments since the start of the Bloodline era.

Those that were backstage said that Zayn looked ‘visibly anxious and nervous’ prior to the promo, but it wasn’t elaborated on what exactly that meant.

Fightful was told that some in the know were expecting ‘somewhat of a different’ promo to take place, but noted that Zayn had accounted for the crowd reaction to let the segment breathe.

The segment featured some loud chants of ‘F**k you Roman’, which resulted in some panic on the production end.

One source also claimed that those in the Gorilla position were confused, and were expecting a different kind of promo, but that was not been subsequently confirmed by Fightful’s additional sources.

Those that spoke to Fightful said they were very happy with how things ended up, with a long time WWE producer calling it ‘special’.

Sami is set to challenge Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship at the Elimination Chamber tonight.

Think you’re a wrestling mastermind? Well you can prove it by taking quizzes in our brand new quiz section! Don’t forget to tweet us your results!

• backstage reaction
• Sami Zayn
• Smackdown
• wwe

Share this article with friends