Road Dogg Once Pitched For Sami Zayn To Wrestle Under Two Monikers
Sami Zayn is currently one of the shining lights across WWE programming – but he may have had to double his output if Road Dogg got his way!
On WWE SmackDown, Sami Zayn provides must-see highlights on a near-weekly basis. ‘The Master Strategist’, through his work alongside The Bloodline, has produced some career-defining work but had Road Dogg gotten his way, he may have been forced to work across both SmackDown and Raw.
Speaking on his Oh…You Didn’t Know? podcast, Road Dogg revealed a hilarious pitch he supposedly made to then-WWE boss Vince McMahon that would have seen Sami Zayn wrestling under both the Zayn and El Generico monikers across both main roster brands:
“I tried to, when I was writing for SmackDown, get him to wrestle on SmackDown and have El Generico wrestle on Monday Night Raw, and Vince wouldn’t go for it. We wanted to try to do that and have people go like, ‘That’s you dude,’ and he’s like, ‘No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ We thought it would be funny. It was Ezekiel before Ezekiel [debuted].“
El Generico was the moniker used by a then-masked Sami Zayn on the independent circuit, rising to fame as one of the top indie performers before he joined WWE in 2013. He found an abundance of success in Ring Of Honor, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, and countless other organisations.
‘The Generic Luchador’ last wrestled under the moniker on 18 January 2013, teaming with Samuray del Sol – f.k.a Kalisto – in a four-team match victory for the Hart Legacy Wrestling company.