JBL Defends Sami Zayn’s Championship Legitimacy Amid Transitional Champion Debate

On the latest episode of Something To Wrestle with John Layfield, JBL reacted to Sami Zayn winning the world title, comparing the gamble to the one WWE took on Eddie Guerrero and recalling the moment he knew Eddie was the right call. Zayn won the Undisputed WWE Championship at Night of Champions.

On Zayn’s Title Victory:

“I think you never know. The idea is worth a shot. Sami Zayn has been a great performer for a very long time, and you take a chance on someone like this and you find out really quick. When they took a chance on Eddie Guerrero, they didn’t know for sure. I remember the next day, we were somewhere up in Northern California and I was sitting back there with Lanza. And Lanza said, ‘Well, we’re about to find out.’ Eddie walked out and the place went freaking ballistic, and he said, ‘Well, there’s our answer.’ It was the right thing. You don’t know until people get the title — sometimes they shrink in it and it crushes them, and sometimes they grow in it. Eddie grew in it, so we’ll see what happens with Sami. I hope he grows in it. I’ve always enjoyed being around Sami. He’s a really hard worker, so we’ll find out.”

Addressing the Transitional Champion Narrative:

“I think it’s a very weird discourse. You talk about the transitional champions, like Stasiak, who at one point they claimed was a mailman — I’m not sure if he was or not, but the term was always mailman back in the day. You put a championship on somebody to get it to somebody else. If you have another babyface you want to put on top, and you don’t want a babyface vs. babyface match, you have a mailman who takes the championship to the other babyface. It probably should have been done with Hogan and Warrior — if you’d had a Sergeant Slaughter, a Piper, or somebody else who could have breached the gap between the two then Hogan wouldn’t have gone from maybe the greatest babyface of all time straight to another great babyface.”

On Zayn as a True Champion:

“I don’t think Sami’s a mailman. I think he’s a champion, and they’re going to give him a shot. and I think the championship is going to be held by Sami as long as the merit’s there — not, ‘Okay, we’ve got to get this on somebody else so we can push our star going into the later part of the year.’ I have no knowledge of that, but I’ve watched wrestling my entire life and been in it about 35 years, and so has Booker and Jeff Jarrett. I agree with them: Sami’s just a champion. Not a transitional champion, not a mailman. This is what’s great about wrestling — the fans bitch and moan, and thank God they care enough to. But when Hunter throws a big monkey wrench into the middle of the machinery, they go, ‘Oh, this isn’t going to work.’ Wait a minute, what do you want? I think it’s great.”

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