Samoa Joe was first released by WWE in April 2021, but Triple H brought him back to be part of NXT once again. He ended up being let go for a second time this past January after WWE rebranded NXT into NXT 2.0.
At ROH Supercard of Honor, Joe made his surprise return to ROH. He will also appear on Wednesday’s Dynamite. During the post-Supercard of Honor media scrum, Joe noted AEW buying ROH surprised him and he was trying to get WWE to buy the tape library.
“It was a major surprise to me, especially coming from my former position and how hard I was pushing to buy the library for the other company. It let me know why it was being such a difficult process. When that did come up, at the same time, having Tony have it and know how much he loves wrestling and knowing how much he loved ROH and the product, just from our meetings and the time knowing each other, I knew it would be good hands. I knew it would be treated with respect and it would be kind of made available to the fans in the best way possible so I was very happy with it.”
Joe stated that he knew his second WWE run was due to Triple H and William Regal. However, once WWE started making changes to NXT and Regal was let go, he knew it was just a matter of time before he was gone.
“My going back to WWE was majorly because of the people I worked with and relationships I built in the company, mainly two people in Triple H and William Regal. As Triple H, dealing with his situation which I obviously knew about and was way more concerned about than my employment. 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 we went a different way.”
He added that his second WWE release freed him up for other projects.
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