Samoa Joe On When He Knew WWE Was Going To Release Him

WWE

Samoa Joe has addressed his WWE departure, and commented on his future with AEW and ROH.

Joe was released from his WWE contract for a second time in January, with a number of notable Performance Center names, including William Regal.

Joe had previously been let go by WWE in April 2021, before returning to NXT that June.

Speaking during the post-ROH Supercard of Honor media scrum, Joe noted that his WWE return was mostly to work with Triple H and Regal.

Stating that he saw the writing on the wall after Regal was let go, Joe said:

“At this point, in my career, what I have done, the second release…my going back to WWE was majorly because of the people I had worked with and the relationship I had built in the company, namely Triple H and William Regal.

“As Triple H, dealing with his situation, which I knew about and was way more concerned about than my employment, and Regal and his departure, I knew the writing was on the wall for me, which is fine. We were a big collective team and a big collective think tank within the company and they went a different way.

“As far as the release, it’s an up and down process for a lot of people. For me, it just freed me up to pursue a lot of projects that I really want to work on and freed me up to talk with Tony and talk about the future of what he wanted to do and I was very surprised a lot of that matched up.”

Joe made his return to ROH during Saturday’s pay-per-view. Confirming that Tony Khan’s acquisition of ROH influenced his decision to sign with AEW, Joe said:

“It played a role, the initial discussion, obviously Tony was playing his cards close to his chest and not revealing things, heavily alluded to it, but never quite revealing. It did play a role. Obviously, I have a lot of my legacy tied with (ROH) and a lot of work that many fans have enjoyed over the years has been affiliated with the promotion.

“To see it and to be a part of it and help influence the future of it was kind of an unmissible opportunity.”

Joe also provided an update on his health, which you can read about right here.

Transcription via Fightful. 

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• departure
• Samoa Joe
• ROH
• wwe

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