Who remembers El Generico? For those who do, the former independent superstar has finally resurfaced. After sitting silently for the past five years, the wrestler’s Twitter account finally came to life as he tweeted out a greeting to his fans. This comes on the heels of friend and former partner Kevin Owens returning to his original last name of Steen after being “fired” by the WWE earlier this month. Generico had previously been rumored to have passed away.
After his last tweet in 2013, El Generico retired from professional wrestling and decided to return to his native Mexico in order to run his orphanage there. After a while, word started circulating that things were not going so well over there. At one point, Kevin Owens was apparently overheard saying that the luchador had met a gruesome end at the hands of the cartel. His surprising reappearance on Twitter came as a shock to many.
Obviously, El Generico is better known as Sami Zayn, a performer currently on WWE’s SmackDown brand. After he and Owens violently attacked SmackDown’s commissioner Shane McMahon, the pair was kayfabe fired by the company. Newly unemployed, Zayn decided to return to his luchador roots and once again became Generico.
Sami Zayn is a Canadian wrestler who adopted the gimmick during his days on the independent scene, prior to signing with the WWE and being placed on the NXT brand. While competing as Generico, he teamed up with Steen, later Owens, and would go on to win the Ring of Honor Tag team Championships with him. In the WWE, the gimmick was immediately dropped, and the star would move up to the main brand before his firing.
It’s unclear yet what exactly this means for Zayn in terms of his WWE run. This could signal the company finally having faith in the star and letting him run with his own ideas for a while. Or, alternatively, it could also mean that they’ve run out of ideas for him, and this is a last-ditch effort to throw an angle out there and see if it sticks. Either could work, as Zayn has been pretty much left to flounder ever since he was called up. If this is his chance, he has all the tools needed to really run with it.