WWE Superstar Sami Zayn Raises Nearly 70K for War Torn Syria

While Sami Zayn did have a match on the Summerslam card, there was another battle he was fighting: Raising money for a Mobile Clinic for the war-torn country of Syria. The Canadian-Syrian Wrestler partnered with SAMS (Syrian American Medical Society) in the middle of July to put together ‘Sami For Syria’, an social media campaign aimed to bring a mobile clinic to provide medical assistance without access to those in Syria without access to regular medical care.

The campaign really kicked into high drive the week before Summerslam, as Zayn offered to match funds for any donation made. The popular mid-carder, who hasn’t been to Syria since he was a teenager, wanted to get the mobile clinic up and running for not just the physical medical conditions, but for mental health purposes as well.

“There will be a general practitioner, a doctor who is able to disperse various medications, a nurse, a midwife, psycho-social care for people dealing with the mental health issues that I don’t think a lot of people think about,” Zayn told Al Arabiya. “When you think about Syria and you think about the conflict in Syria, a lot of people think about the injuries and the medical emergencies. But a lot of people don’t think that the people who deal with these injuries, or the people that are surrounded by these injuries have to deal with mental trauma that lasts, sometimes, a lifetime. Post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety. Sadly for a lot of these kids in Syria, this is all they’ve known, so a lot of these mental health issues are prevalent in children. I’m very happy that our mobile clinic will do something to help them as well.”

One thing that made Zayn really want to give back to Syria was seeing what happened to the place he visited as a teenager and his thoughts of the displaced family members there.

“I was maybe 13 or 14 years old. The last time I was there I was actually kind of bummed out because my mother took me there for the whole summer which meant I was missing a whole summer of WWE,” said Zayn. “That’s all I cared about at that time. It’s pretty crazy to look at what Homs was, the town I was visiting and where my family is from, and to see pictures of what Homs looks like now and it’s—I don’t know, it just blows my mind. It’s so tragic and so sad. I know it’s hard for a lot of people who don’t have that association with Syria to really empathize. It’s so hard, if you are living in the [United] States, to imagine what it would be like to them. You can’t imagine it. People struggle to make that emotional connection, which is why, I feel like, if I can be that middle ground for them.”

When Zayn first started out ‘Sami for Syria’ his initial goal was raising $48,000 over a six-month period, and not only has Zayn reached that goal, he’s blown right by it as the foundation has raised $70,000 in little over a month. Giving Zayn a chance to set higher goals, and potentially more mobile clinics in various places in Syria. With that, Zayn has become the middle ground and emotional connection for two different worlds, the WWE universe, and now the war torn country of Syria.