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Top WWE Star Taking Time Off

WWE Raw logo over NXT Meta-Four

A major WWE star will be taking some time off over the festive period.

2023 has been a banner year in the career of Sami Zayn and it seems he’ll be ending it with some well-earned time off.

The year began with Zayn as part of The Bloodline, but his star power hit a new level when he turned his back on Roman Reigns at the Royal Rumble. This set up a match between the pair at Payback in Montreal which the Tribal Chief eventually won. Despite this, Zayn’s renewed partnership with Kevin Owens saw him main event night one of WrestleMania 39 as they won the World Tag Team Titles from The Usos.

In more recent weeks Zayn has returned to being a singles star after Owens moved to SmackDown.

On the December 4th episode of Raw, Zayn faced and then was attacked by Drew McIntyre. Writing in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer reported that this was done to write Zayn off television.

“It looked like they were doing an injury angle with McIntyre and Zayn when McIntyre stomped on Zayn’s bad knee.

I don’t have it confirmed Zayn will be off for a while due to that, but do know that he had asked for time off recently and was granted it but wasn’t told when that would begin past he was not scheduled for 12/28 show in Laval, Quebec that would normally be built around him as that was during the scheduled break although it is possible they could have him do that show.”

WWE Makes 14 New Signings

While one major star is taking some time off, WWE hopes they’ve just signed some stars of the future. On December 6th, the company announced it had signed 14 new recruits to the WWE NIL (Name, Image & Likeness) program which is designed to recruit talented college athletes while they are in college and give them a future with WWE if that’s something they want to pursue in the future.

The newest class is made up of athletes from disciplines such as track and field, baseball, and gymnastics.