WWE: Is Sami Zayn Turning Heel?

In recent weeks we’ve seen Sami Zayn and former longtime friend Kevin Owens spending more time in backstage segments on WWE SmackDown Live. Could this possibly be leading to Zayn joining the Darkside?

This time last year Sami Zayn was wasting away on Raw. Consistently at the bottom of the card, and jobbing to the bigger names more often than not, fans were clamoring for the “Underdog from the Underground” to switch brands and reinvigorate his career on WWE’s blue brand.

When the time came after WrestleMania 33 for WWE to do their annual draft fans waited with bated breath to see Sami on WWE SmackDown, when it happened fans were understandably excited. Everyone could already Sami getting the push he finally deserved.

It never happened.

WWE teased it right after he jumped brands, and everyone could already see him holding the WWE Championship overhead shortly. When he was booked in a six-pack challenge to decide the number one contender for Randy Orton’s WWE Championship things looked promising, especially when you consider who he was facing in the match.

Credit: WWE.com

At the time, Ziggler seemed to be the only real threat to Zayn becoming the new No.1 Contender, then WWE threw us all a curveball and made Jinder Mahal the number one contender. Zayn even took the pinfall.

Since then, no one in that match has been near a championship of any kind. Rawley has been stuck in the abyss waiting for his storyline with Zack Ryder to take off, thankfully it finally is. No one knows what has happened to Harper and Rowan; both men have been off of WWE TV for an extended period now. And Ziggler just recently re-emerged as someone who copies other people’s gimmicks without ever actually stepping foot in the ring.

That leaves us with Zayn, who has lost feuds to Baron Corbin, and Aiden English recently. He also had that confusing mini-feud with Kanellis that ended abruptly due to personal reasons on Kanellis’s end.

The career resurgence we all hoped for hasn’t come to fruition. Zayn is still in the same place he was a year ago. It’s beginning to look like WWE may just let him fade into obscurity and let him go come cut day in a couple of years. It would be a big shame if that happened, and WWE should do everything in their power to keep him around, including turning him heel, and there may not be a better time to do it either.

Currently, former best friend, Kevin Owens is caught up in a rivalry with Shane McMahon that is set to culminate in a match at Hell in a Cell, but many believe it will reach out until Survivor Series in a Team KO vs. Team Shane match.

WWE has two opportunities to turn Sami heel in this storyline, and both make sense.

They could either have Sami somehow make his way into the Hell in a Cell structure and act like he’s going to help Shane beat up Kevin Owens, maybe WWE makes this an ‘if Shane loses he’s no longer SmackDown Commissioner, and if Owens loses he leaves WWE.’ Zayn helps Owens win ousting Shane as SmackDown Commissioner. Zayn expressed his disappointment in the way he’s been handled on SmackDown Live earlier this week on Twitter:

This, of course, would lead to the match at Survivor Series, and Shane getting his position back at the event by beating Team KO.

If WWE didn’t want to do things that way, they could do virtually the same thing at Survivor Series. Same stipulations as mentioned before, except this time Sami is on team Shane, and when it gets down to just Sami and Shane vs. Owens in a two-on-one situation at the end, Sami could ‘Helluva Kick’ Shane and walk out of the ring, leaving Owens to pick up the pieces.

In either circumstance Zayn could express his disdain for his previous treatment, saying “Bryan and Shane promised me more opportunities and better treatment than what I was getting on Raw, and I’ve gotten neither.” (Or something to that effect.)

Zayn and Owens don’t have to team together by any means after this all goes down, in fact, they can stay as far away from each other as they are now.

As my colleague Brandon Mizgala pointed out in his piece, “Are Triple H and Kevin Owens Working Together,” Triple H is oddly absent from all of this. But Owens has no gripes with Triple H, so this leading to a match between the two of them makes no sense.

However, Owens ousting Shane could lead to him choosing Hunter as the SmackDown Commissioner, which could then result in a match between Hunter and Shane at WrestleMania where the winner regains control of SmackDown Live.

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Think about the trouble it could cause for Smackdown GM Daniel Bryan because of the history he has with Triple H.

If, all this does come to fruition, then the possible storylines and angles are endless going into the Rumble and WrestleMania.

And to think, it could all stem from a Sami Zayn heel turn.