{"id":75161,"date":"2020-08-28T20:46:06","date_gmt":"2020-08-29T00:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonprowrestling.com\/?p=75161"},"modified":"2020-08-28T20:46:06","modified_gmt":"2020-08-29T00:46:06","slug":"sami-zayn-returns-wwe-smackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2020\/08\/28\/sami-zayn-returns-wwe-smackdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Sami Zayn Returns to WWE SmackDown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On this week&#8217;s episode of <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonprowrestling.com\/2020\/08\/28\/preview-smackdown-8-28-20\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>WWE SmackDown<\/strong><\/a>, <strong>Sami Zayn<\/strong> made his return after several months of inactivity. SmackDown opened with the new WWE Intercontinental Champion, <strong>Jeff Hardy<\/strong>, issuing an open challenge to anyone other than the previous titleholder, <strong>AJ Styles<\/strong>. The challenge was accepted by <strong>Shinsuke Nakamura<\/strong>, a former Intercontinental Champion in his own right. Following a competitive bout that saw Nakamura target the knee of Hardy, the current titleholder was able to defeat the \u201cKing of Strong Style.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Post-match, as Hardy made his way back up the ramp, he was confronted by the returning Sami Zayn. He wasn&#8217;t alone, however, as he was in possession of his own version of the Intercontinental Championship. Zayn confronted Hardy and both men held their titles in the air. Styles stared them down from the opposite end of the ramp as well. Suddenly, Zayn knocked out Hardy with a Helluva Kick. Backstage, Zayn accused Hardy of \u201cpretending\u201d to be the champion. He also refused to give an explanation for his absence that lasted multiple months. Regardless, it was clear that Zayn regarded himself as the true Intercontinental Champion.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">LET&#39;S GO!!! <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SamiZayn?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@SamiZayn<\/a> is BACK, and he thinks that HE is the true <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ICChampion?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#ICChampion<\/a>! <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/SmackDown?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#SmackDown<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AJStylesOrg?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@AJStylesOrg<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JEFFHARDYBRAND?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@JEFFHARDYBRAND<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/20Bn6Qkjbb\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/20Bn6Qkjbb<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; WWE (@WWE) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WWE\/status\/1299505594890702849?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">August 29, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Zayn originally won the Intercontinental Championship this past March. At the <strong><em>Elimination Chamber<\/em><\/strong> pay-per-view, Zayn, Nakamura, and <strong>Cesaro<\/strong> faced <strong>Braun Strowman<\/strong>, the then-Intercontinental Champion, in a 3-on-1 handicap match. The match in question concluded when Zayn pinned Strowman, winning the title in the process. Zayn held the Intercontinental Championship until mid-May, facing the likes of <strong>Daniel Bryan<\/strong> along the way. In May, he was officially stripped of the championship following his absence from TV due to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n<div class=\"td-post-content tagdiv-type\">\n<p>Stay tuned to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonprowrestling.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a>\u00a0for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world.\u00a0WWE fan? You can check out an almost unlimited array of WWE content on the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/watch.wwe.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">WWE Network<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On this week&#8217;s episode of WWE SmackDown, Sami Zayn made his return after several months of inactivity. SmackDown opened with the new WWE Intercontinental Champion, Jeff Hardy, issuing an open challenge to anyone other than the previous titleholder, AJ Styles. The challenge was accepted by Shinsuke Nakamura, a former Intercontinental Champion in his own right. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3354,"featured_media":75163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2192,26,3],"tags":[106,52,47],"class_list":["post-75161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-wrestling","category-smackdown","category-wwe-universe","tag-sami-zayn","tag-smackdown","tag-wwe"],"modified_by":"Robbie Sutter","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}