WWE Hall Of Famer Praises Sami Zayn United States Championship Reign

A WWE Hall of Famer has come out with some praise for Sami Zayn and his recent United States Championship reign.

Zayn’s run with the US Title came to an end at 49 days on SmackDown this past Friday as he lost to Ilja Dragunov.

Zayn had won the title from Solo Sikoa on August 29, and had a series of highly praised matches as part of his weekly ‘open challenge’ for the championship.

With the title, he had matches against John Cena, Rey Fenix, Carmelo Hayes, Je’Von Evans, Aleister Black, Shinsuke Nakamura, and finally against Dragunov.

Widley regarded as the best part of SmackDown over the past few weeks, WWE Hall of Famer Mark Henry as now echoed that sentiment, with some praise for Zayn on Busted Open.

Henry said:

“Sami Zayn and that open challenge – it made wrestling.

“Very few times do you have one individual wrestler that takes over. He took over SmackDown.

“And there’s some great wrestlers on SmackDown, including the one Cody Rhodes. But over the last month and a half, it’s been all about Sami, the matches that he’s had.

“The match he had against Je’Von Evans, go back to that, that in itself is warranted like, the guy is something special.

“And then you go and have the match that he had with Ilja Dragunov last night? Holy s**t.”

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The match against Zayn was Dragunov’s first appearance since September 2024, when he suffered an injury in an untelevised match against GUNTHER that had ruled him out of action for over a year until Friday.