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Samoa Joe is one of the most popular professional wrestlers in the world. He is well known for his runs in TNA Wrestling and Ring of Honor during the early days of his career. Recently, Joe's two-decade-long record was officially broken.
During his time in ROH, Joe was involved in many historic matches. He also became the third ROH World Champion in history by defeating Xavier on March 22, 2003. The Samoan Submission Machine held the title for 645 days making him the longest reigning champion in Ring of Honor history. This record would remain for 20 years until it was recently broken.
Athena became the fourth-ever ROH Women's World Champion on 10 December 2022 by defeating Mercedes Martinez. Since then, she has had a stranglehold on the women's division. The former Ember Moon of WWE has also put an end to Joe's 645-day record by holding onto the title for 646 days making her the longest-reigning ROH champion in history.
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Samoa Joe on winning the NXT Championship at a live event
Samoa Joe started his WWE career by first wrestling in NXT. During this time, he feuded with Finn Balor who was the NXT Champion at the time. Balor defended the title against Joe at a NXT live event and ended up losing which was not the norm for the Stamford-based promotion.
During a recent interview, The Samoan Submission Machine mentioned the reason why the title changed hands during a live event.
"I thought it was one of the most brilliant things that we did. When you're building a new brand and an imprint like we were in 'NXT,' you know a major thing is we want people to come to our live events. We were running live events around the nation, and if you knew if you showed up to an 'NXT' live event that a world title could change hands, I mean it just makes that event so much more exciting." [H/T: WrestlingInc]
Samoa Joe also won the AEW World Championship at AEW Worlds End last year and lost it to Swerve Strickland earlier this year. The veteran is currently on a hiatus from the company.
