(Not to make this all about me, but I thought we should end on a high note. Also WWE are taking their sweet time uploading high-quality photos for the main event, so sue me.)

It wasn’t a world championship match, and it wasn’t in Montreal, but Sami Zayn’s awe-inspiring victory over GUNTHER on Saturday night for the Intercontinental Championship still felt like a cleansing, a purging of any remaining demons left over from last year’s Elimination Chamber. So many elements were the same — an utterly dominant champion enjoying a historic title reign, beating Sami down mercilessly while taunting his wife, who was sitting ringside. It was clearly meant to be an echo of that other match, just over a year ago, when Sami came so close to dethroning Roman Reigns.

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Only this time, Sami did it. Sami survived the beating, ended the historic reign, validated the faith of his family and his fans. Sami won.

But how? What was different? What did he have in Philadelphia that he didn’t have in Montreal?

Late in the match, after Sami had suffered seemingly innumerable clotheslines, powerbombs, and splashes off the top rope, his fate was apparently sealed. Even Sami Zayn couldn’t take that many finishers and still kick out; if GUNTHER had just pinned him, his title reign would have remained intact. But while GUNTHER was wasting time running his mouth at Sami’s wife, something happened. Sami’s lifeless body began to twitch. His arms and legs began to flail around wildly — not the kind of thing Sami usually does, but vaguely familiar to some of us, the people who were watching ROH or PWG or any number of other indie promotions in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

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GUNTHER climbed to the top rope for another splash, but Sami sprang to his feet, suddenly rejuvenated, and nailed the champion with a Helluva Kick. He climbed up to the top rope, joining the staggering GUNTHER. And then, he hit a move that he has never performed in WWE — not once: a top rope turnbuckle brainbuster. It was once the finisher of a masked wrestler named El Generico, who vanished from the indie scene in 2012 and appeared the following year in “WWE NXT,” maskless and bearing the brand new moniker of Sami Zayn.

Ever since Sami Zayn came into existence, El Generico has been a ghost, a phantom, banished back to whatever mystic Plane of Wrestling he came from. Saturday night in Philadelphia, the spirit of El Generico inhabited Sami Zayn’s body once more, willing him to his feet, giving him the weapon he could use to win. Sami Zayn is entering his fourth reign as Intercontinental Champion; in a very real way, El Generico is entering his first.

And yeah, this might just be the psychotically happy ravings of a longtime Sami superfan, and the IC title wasn’t exactly what I wanted for him at WrestleMania 40. But it’s important to recognize that Sami really did achieve something on Night 1. His previous reigns with this particular title came as a heel, a bitter, lowly version of himself; at the time, Sami holding the gold was less an indicator of his elevated status and more a sign of how far the IC title had fallen. That persona eventually led him to The Bloodline, which ultimately led him to the massively popular babyface status that was always his destiny, but that version of Sami had still never won a main roster singles title. He couldn’t beat Reigns in Montreal because he hadn’t completed his journey — El Generico was unable to possess him because he wasn’t his true self. It was only after he reunited with his eternal wrestling soulmate, Kevin Owens, winning the tag team titles in last year’s Night 1 main event, that the version of Sami that could become Generico was truly whole.

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On Saturday, as he prepared for his match with GUNTHER, Sami got encouragement from his coach, Chad Gable; he got encouragement from his wife and child. But right before he walked through the curtain, he got encouragement from Kevin Owens, who he hadn’t seen since they were separated in a draft trade last year.

Then he walked through the curtain. He slayed the giant. He won the title. As Sami Zayn, but also as El Generico — finally, at long last, the complete version of himself. In that moment, he was unstoppable. And while we don’t know what the future holds for Sami, we don’t need to know anymore. We already know the only thing we need to know: that Sami has El Generico again. That’s enough.

We believe.

Written by Miles Schneiderman