Samoa Joe joined Out of Character with Ryan Satin earlier this week to talk about his WWE career.
During it, he looked back on his original NXT run and how he was told when he joined the promotion that he wouldn’t be going to the main roster. After finding success, that decision was changed.
“The same, if probably a little bit less of a good forecast,” Joe said when asked if he received a similar message to Owens. “I think people think I get hurt when I hear that, but I’ve experienced this my entire career everywhere I’ve gone. Everywhere. I give Gabe (Sapolsky) a bunch of guff about this now when I see him, but my initial time in Ring of Honor it was ‘hey, we can’t afford a Californian boy. We’re bringing you in for this one match, it’ll be cool.’ Then we went out there, had one match and then it was like ‘hey, you’re working for us every month, every week. Every time we have a show, you’re on.’
“TNA, and Dutch Mantel is probably one of my favorite people in life, one of the great characters in wrestling. I remember I’m going to walk out for my match on Impact, my very first match. And he looks me up and goes ‘well son, you only get one chance to make a first impression. Doesn’t look like you’re about to make a good one. Alright, go out there and get them kid.’ I had known Dutch for a little bit, so I’m dying laughing as I walk through the curtain. So being doubted walking through the door is absolutely, I’m numb to it. So even being told that, I’m like ‘that’s great. Cool.’ And once I was in things started changing rapidly. I’m just happy that WWE was willing to change with those thing as they changed rapidly. We went through several contracts in that short amount of time, but we finally got on one we all liked and we went from there.”
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