Sami Zayn is a lot of things to the WWE Universe; he's a grizzled vet, the “Underdog From The Underground,” and remains very good friends with El Generico, one of the best silent luchadors in the history of the independent wrestling scene. Zayn has 40 matches with at least a four-star rating according to Dave Meltzer, helped to establish NXT as a legit brand worthy of a nationally televised deal on the same channel as RAW, and has maintained a friendship/rivalry with Kevin Owens across over 20 promotions since their first match in 2003, according to Cagematch.

And yet, right now at least, no title means more to Zayn than the one he was officially awarded by Roman Reigns on the most recent episode of SmackDown: “The Honorary Uce.”

That's right, after working with The Bloodline in an informal setting for months, Zayn's role and title were made official by Reigns in a pretty incredible segment that shifted from tragedy to triumph in a matter of a few minutes. Zayn was handed a shirt with his new nickname printed across the front of it – a shirt that, by his own admission, is selling tons at the WWE's official webstore – and just like that, all of his hard work was justified.

Zayn took to Twitter to celebrate his achievement, and all was right in the world… at least until A.J. Styles rolled in and tried to rain on his parade.

Calling Zayn's shirt pathetic, “The Honorary Uce” shot back at the “Phenomenal One,” questioning why he would disrespect The Bloodline, and promising that he and the faction's muscle, Solo Sikoa, would have to show up on RAW to teach the former friend of Finn Balor a lesson or two.

Fortunately, someone in the WWE social media team passed this interaction along to Triple H, who, despite Zayn being a SmackDown performer, decided to book the Canadian Superstar for the company's show in Edmonton against Styles. The stage was set, the match was made, and after turning down the help of Judgement Day, Styles found himself slammed on the ring apron and ate a Helluva Kick from a limping Zayn for the 1-2-3. Had Styles had help around the ring like Zayn did who knows, maybe the results would have been different, but alas, that wasn't the case. No, Zayn got the win, got to walk up the ramp, and got to talk to Kevin Parick of RAW Talk about why even a Ringo Starr contract won't stop him from defending the honor of The Bloodline.

Sami Zayn missed a Beatle to teach WWE's “Phenomenal One” a lesson.

Article Continues Below

When asked if there was any message from the “Head of the Table,” Roman Reigns, before his rare RAW match against A.J. Styles by Patrick, Zayn eagerly passed it along.

“No,” Zayn replied. “No, Roman didn’t need to say anything, something just don’t need to be said when it comes to family, right? This is family, we understand what needs to be done and we knew tonight that business needed to be taken care of. And that business was teaching A.J. Styles a lesson. Because this man goes completely unprompted after… first of all, Roman Reigns gives me this shirt in the middle of the ring.”

After a brief, weird interjection from Patrick, Zayn continued.

“(The shirt) was a beautiful gift, one of the most thoughtful gifts on its own, let alone that it came from the Tribal Chief, the man who is the Undisputed Universal Champion for over 755 days now, okay? So this is an important thing to me, and then A.J. Styles completely unprompted goes on Twitter? This is supposed to be an adult? Takes a shot at me? Calls the shirt pathetic? So yeah, now, you’re not just insulting the shirt, you’re not just insulting the entire Bloodline when you do that. We did not want to be here tonight. I had tickets to go see Ringo Starr in Montreal actually, I’ve never seen him before, and the man’s 82. How much more time do I have? I had to cancel. I had to cancel and come here but I am happy to do it, Edmonton liked me by the way, because we knew the business at task was tech A.J. Styles a lesson on behalf of The Bloodline and I would say that message was sent.”

With his match won and his case made, Zayn complemented Sikoa for his help, and the duo road off into the sunset to presumably check out Ringo Starr’s other Canadian tour dates. Fortunately, Starr still has 16 shows to go on this run, including multiple shows in Zayn's home country, so the WWE Superstar appears to be good to go.