When Sami Zayn was 13, he went with one of his best friends to watch Canadian hero Bret Hart defend his WWE championship against American challenger Shawn Michaels at the Survivor Series in downtown Montreal.
Sitting in the nosebleeds of the Montreal Canadiens' arena, Zayn and his buddy passed binoculars back and forth so they could see the action as Hart apparently tapped out to the Sharpshooter, his own signature submission move.
In reality, WWE owner Vince McMahon had ordered the bell to be rung to end the match and get the title off of Hart before he jumped ship to rival wrestling promotion WCW in an event now known as the "Montreal Screwjob".
That blurring of fiction and reality was formative for the young Zayn, who will compete in a War Games match with the OG Bloodline team at this year's edition of Survivor Series at Vancouver's Rogers Arena on Saturday.
"That was very different, because that was real, but I didn't know it was real," Zayn said. "It was confusing. I can't quite compare it, but for me to feel something like that in the pit of my stomach, like I've been stabbed, or like I wanted to throw up, from wrestling, I think on some level that was part of the addiction.
"What I hope to channel in my own career is to make people feel that way about something I do, as simultaneously silly and profound as pro wrestling is."
Zayn, from Laval, Que., is a central figure in an ongoing plot fans call "the Bloodline storyline." The three-year saga revolves around the Anoa'i family, a group of Samoan relatives who have a long lineage in the world of professional wrestling that, among others, includes Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson.
He had not been a part of the Bloodline storyline for months but was recently drawn back in to fight alongside Roman Reigns and his cousins Jimmy and Jey Uso against their brother Solo Sikoa, another cousin Jacob Fatu, as well as Tama Tonga and Tonga Loa, a pair of Tongan brothers, in the violent War Games match.
Despite being a Canadian of Syrian descent, Zayn is considered an "honorary uce," a Samoan slang term equivalent to "bro" or "sis," after he found a way to fit into the legitimate family dynamic of the extended Samoan and Tongan clans.
"I had kind of just attributed the success of the story as right place, right time, right kind of variables, but then as soon as I got back on screen with the Usos, and we did one episode of TV that started one place, and then it took a right turn, and then it took a left turn and by the end of the night, I was like, 'oh, man, we're back.'
"It just felt there's something. It wasn't just a case of right place, right time, right characters at that time. It really is a chemistry issue."
A War Games match has two standard rings pushed together, with a large cage surrounding both of them. One member from each five-man team starts the match in the cage, with the teams taking turns sending additional wrestlers into the fray at regular intervals.
Bronson Reed and CM Punk were recently added to Solo's and Reigns's teams respectively. Punk's addition to Reigns and Zayn's team calls back to larger story arcs that date back more than a decade.
"A big part of the success of those characters revolves around leaning on the other characters involved in that story," said Zayn. "Those dynamics are what helped reinforce those characters.
"So those characters, when you take them out and put them in other programs and other storylines, are great, but when you put them in the story that kind of defined them, it's magical."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 28, 2024.
John Chidley-Hill, The Canadian Press
