Sami Zayn Shares Why He Keeps His Family Life Private
In conversation with Ryan Satin on a recent edition of “Out of Character,” Sami Zayn discussed why keeps his family life private.
The topic arose when he was discussing his match with Roman Reigns at Elimination Chamber, since the buildup to the match was the first time his family had been involved in any way on-screen in his wrestling career.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On apprehension with sharing his private life to the world: “I was apprehensive for a very long time, and I still am. I’m still, overall, a pretty private person. I don’t know; something about it feels wrong to me. I don’t know. I guess this is a layered question because there’s many different facets about it which I think have not felt right. So first and foremost, my wife, my child, whoever, any family member I have, they didn’t sign up for this. I did.”
On encountering negativity, getting better at dealing with it over time: “So I, over the last 20 years, have built a certain armor to where you could hear negative comments and you could kind of deflect. They bounce right off you. And even then, every now and again, you’ll come across something where it gets to you. It really doesn’t matter who you are.”
On not wanting to expose his family to the negativity: “You can tune out most negative comments, but every now and again, one will get you, and I’m used to that, even though by and large the internet has been very nice to me throughout my entire career. My point being, it’s still something I kind of signed up for, and it’s part of the territory. So for someone who didn’t ask for it and who’s probably not equipped emotionally to handle total strangers making ruthless comments about their whatever, about their existence, about their appearance, about anything, I just don’t want to subject people in my life to that.”
On not using his family to boost his popularity: “And there’s the other aspect of it, which is not everything needs to be commodified in a way that I’m using it to sort of leverage for popularity. Like, ‘Oh here. Let me give you access to a window of my personal life so that you could like me more [or] so that you could connect with me more.’”
On his approach as to how he presents himself: “I don’t know. I’m a bit old school in that here’s the performance, here’s what I’m presenting to you, and that’s what you get, whether you like me or dislike me will hopefully be based by and large on what I’m presenting.”
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