What’s the story?
WWE superstar Samoa Joe was on Talk IS Jericho and spoke out about the contacts within WWE that assisted him in making a move over into the developmental system of NXT. Joe had been a highly sought after talent for many years prior to actually signing with the company.
In case you didn’t know...
Samoa Joe has been tearing through both NXT and Monday Night Raw since debuting, and his domination looks set to continue with Joe being positioned as a big player on the red brand. As we previously mentioned, many people wondered whether or not Joe would ever make it to WWE after years and years over in Impact Wrestling and on the indies.
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The heart of the matter
Joe’s trajectory has been on the rise for a long time now, and it appears as if one of the leading reasons for that was his route into the company. It seems like WWE are changing the way in which they do business when it comes to bringing talent in from supposed “rival” organisations, which signifies the growing change behind the scenes with Triple H slowing taking over the day to day operations from Vince McMahon. Here’s what Joe had to say:
“It was definitely kind of something that happened through a network. I think my first contact was Paul Heyman. I had sent him a Direct Tweet. I had known Paul for a number of years and I simply said, hey Paul, I’m not on paper anywhere and wanted to pick your brain and see what you thought on the things I can do and how I should proceed and if you know Paul, you know that he went into overdrive.
“I think the next conversations was with Joey Mercury and he asked me if I was done in TNA. I have known Mercury for years back when I was in ROH. From there, Road Dogg and a bunch of other guys had gotten into Triple H’s ear so he said let’s have a meeting and we set a meeting and sat down and talked about it and went from there.”
Also read: Samoa Joe and Seth Rollins will steal the show at Payback
What’s next?
Joe looks set to wreak havoc on Raw over the next few months heading into SummerSlam, with his next victim being Seth Rollins this Sunday at Payback. Many fans are anticipating a Rollins victory, but considering how strongly he’s been built it wouldn’t surprise anyone if Joe was the man who walked out of San Jose as the victor.
Author’s take
It’s always great to hear these little nuggets of information from behind the scenes of WWE, especially when they involve people like Samoa Joe and Paul Heyman. It’s interesting to know that they had a relationship prior to WWE, which could plant the seeds for a partnership between the two somewhere down the line.
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