Last week on Friday Night Smackdown, Sami Zayn shockingly dethroned former AEW megastar CM Punk to become the new Undisputed WWE Champion. Now, All Elite Wrestling legend Jim Ross has shared his two cents on whether the sports entertainment juggernaut can feasibly push The Underdog from The Underground as a legitimate top star.
After weeks of escalating hostilities between Sami Zayn and CM Punk, The Best in The World finally defended his Undisputed WWE Championship against The Last Real Good Guy last Friday on Smackdown. Fans in Mexico City were treated to a massive surprise, however, as Sami successfully unseated Punk for his title after getting inadvertently clobbered by Kevin Owens with his own championship belt.
During a recent edition of Grilling JR, veteran AEW commentator Jim Ross shared his thoughts on WWE booking Zayn to regain the Undisputed Championship. The legendary announcer argued that regardless of how exceptional a wrestler the former El Generico is, the latter supposedly does not command the kind of mass appeal that the Stamford-based company takes into account when pushing someone as a main event player.
“They’re trying to get Sami Zayn over, and they think he needs the title to do so. You can go through the annals of pro wrestling and find a lot of guys in that exact role that Sami Zayn is currently in. He is a h*ll of a worker, but is he the guy you put in the main event of WrestleMania and feel good about it? I ain’t so sure about that. I don’t know if he has enough mass appeal. I’m not sure he’s over—underscore the word over—as much as he needs to be to be your #1 guy. And no matter what you say, in that company the #1 guy is the WWE Champion.”
Good Ol’ JR heaped praise on Sami as a performer, however, and continued:
“Hey, I like to watch him work. I think he’s very entertaining; he’s very skilled. But again, is he the guy you put in the main event of WrestleMania? I’m not sure. And it’s not because he can’t work. It’s just because he hasn’t been put into positions consistently enough to give him a fighting chance to get over with the fanbase.” [H/T- TJR Wrestling]
AEW’s Jim Ross shared a concerning health update recently
Over the past few years, Jim Ross has had to struggle with a number of major health issues. On the latest episode of Grilling JR, the 74-year-old AEW personality revealed that the doctor had discovered a number of moles on his back during a recent medical appointment. Ross underwent biopsies for all of those moles, and will be receiving the test results in about ten days or so.
“But when I got there and I took my shirt off, I was told that I had like seven or eight moles on my back that they were concerned about… Then they took biopsies of all those multiple moles. They’ll send those off, and in about 10 days I’ll have the results. I’m hoping it’s not the bad stuff, because I’ve gone through 22 radiation treatments on my ankle that still isn’t healed,” said the WCW, WWE and AEW icon [H/T F4Wonline.com]
It remains to be seen when JR will be back on the commentator’s desk in AEW.
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Edited by Anurag Mukherjee
