Sami Zayn has had multiple shots at the WWE Championship over the years, and it looked like his time may have come at WWE Royal Rumble 2026 when he faced Drew McIntyre for the title.

The story was that Sami had never beaten Drew, so it would make sense for Sami to beat Drew.

He did not.

Sami eventually got his moment at WWE Night of Champions, winning the Undisputed WWE Title in a triple threat match against Gunther and Cody Rhodes. Now, Sami is a two-time champion.

Asked how it makes him feel to be a champion by Chris Van Vliet on Insight, Sami said, “It’s cool. Yeah, here’s the thing that’s funny about it because even at the start of this year, which was nine months ago, ten months ago now, whatever, I was wrestling Drew, and I didn’t win. I had kind of just battled with it and went, you know what, maybe the ship sailed. I was real close a couple of years ago with all the Bloodline stuff and all that, and even in the fallout of that. Then I was close, but after losing that match, I was like, well, you can’t tell this story again. Maybe it’ll happen in some different way, and it did happen in a bit of a different way. But the Cinderella story, underdog who finally wins the big one- we burnt that card; that card was done after losing to Drew because you can only tell that story so many times. You can get them on board once, twice, three times, and it wasn’t the right time. It wasn’t. I didn’t have the momentum that I had a year or two prior to that. But I had to kind of struggle to accept that maybe I just missed the window, slipped through the cracks, and it just won’t happen. I’ve said this before in other interviews, or to friends, or my wife, or whatever. I’ve had a tremendous career, and winning the world title at that point is just the cherry on top. It would be nice to have, but it’s not like if I never win it, it’s like I never [got it]. You know what I mean? You don’t live and die by these things. You kind of just got to look at the big picture.”

Sami is set to face Roman Reigns for the Crown Jewel Championship at WWE Crown Jewel.

Elsewhere during the interview, Sami looked back on his match against Johnny Knoxville at WrestleMania 38. You can find his full comments here.