Sami Zayn Explains Why He Namedropped AEW During "Electric Chair" Segment On RAW

During an interview with Cultaholic Wrestling, a bit of an infamous moment in recent WWE history came about when Sami Zayn was asked about namedropping AEW during the "Electric Chair" segment.

“What happened is the timing of that is sometimes forgotten. You’re referring to the electric chair segment which was a totally unscripted segment. The timing of that segment was very interesting because it was the next day after AEW had just had their first-ever pay-per-view. It was a very hot topic at the time. It was hot off the heels of their first pay-per-view and it was hot off the announcement that AEW was going to be a company.”

On why he brought them up:

“It was so new and so fresh and we felt that it was going to be on everybody’s minds. I felt like it was bound to come up, and it kind of weirdly didn’t. At that point in the segment, some of the questions I thought would’ve been a lot more provocative because it was unscripted. While I was out there, I felt like a lot of the questions were a bit flat. Me using my judgment, I figured this needed some pizzazz, so I brought it up myself.”

On the legacy of the moment:

“When I got back it wasn’t so much that it came up, but the way it came up. The way I sort of addressed it, when it wasn’t really needed to be addressed. All this to say that in my defense, the fact that we’re still talking about it three years later tells me that my instincts were right. We needed something memorable to make this a shocking segment, but unfortunately, that was the death blow of the electric chair segment because it was never to be repeated again.”