The following originally ran in the Weekly Planet 7/18/18.
Professional wrestling is about storytelling. Unlike, say, football or baseball where the price of admission is based on watching pure athleticism, sports entertainment is about watching stories. Fueds and personas grow over long periods of time. Sometimes these arcs can be traced over a whole career. But sometimes, everything can change in a single moment.
For Sami Zayn, this was Hell in a Cell 2017. After languishing for years in the WWE as a rosy-cheeked babyface (with the best pained expressions in any ring he’s in), the character of Sami snapped. Perhaps the man did, too.
When bitter rival Kevin Owens was in a position where he could lose it all, Sami shockingly leapt to his aid, saving him from a finishing blow and helping him to leave the night victorious. Two men, friends for decades, one who wanted to get to the top the right way, the other who would get there by any means necessary, bonded together in a shared desire to take what’s theirs.
In Issue #18 of the WWE comic book from Boom! Studios, Dennis Hopeless, Tini Howard, and Serg Acuña detailed the rise to this moment. From their days wrestling in armories and bingo halls to the culminating moment at Hell in a Cell, the team lay everything out there on the page. It turns these wrestling personas into breathing characters. It’s a great issue. Any wrestling fan would be a fool to miss out on this.
This week sees the next chapter in this story unveiled in #19. Sami and Kevin lay in to World Wrestling Entertainment and take no prisoners along the way. If it’s anywhere as good as the start of this story, it will absolutely be a must-read. If you like tales of triumph and desperation, of loyalty and betrayal, of succeeding against a surmountable foe, then this WWE book may just be the one for you…
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