8 Ups And 6 Downs From WWE WrestleMania 36 (Part 1)

4. The Chickens*** Heel Retains

Sami Zayn retains
WWE.com

There’s something about Sami Zayn essentially being a weakling manager holding a prominent title that will rub fans in very different ways.

The Intercontinental Championship has always been regarded as the “workhorse” title in WWE, so having a wrestler-turned-manager hold the strap in 2020 – and then defeat the perfect workrate workhorse to hold the title at WrestleMania – is quite a head fake.

Zayn spent the better part of the match fleeing from Daniel Bryan, hiding behind Cesaro and Shinsuke Nakamura, before being caught and beaten from pillar to post, unable to inflict any damage on Bryan.

As mentioned earlier, the ending – Bryan diving off the top and getting caught with a “Helluva Kick” – was a bit more than abrupt and made Bryan look like a goof. But we’ll give a tacit “up” to this because Zayn seems to be relishing his role, and eventually, someone is going to cut the Gordian Knot and defeat him.

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Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.