WWE superstar Samoa Joe was the latest guest on Ryan Satin’s Out Of Character podcast to discuss a wide range of topics, most notably his new position with NXT, which he reveals was offered to him on the same day he was given his WWE release. Highlights are below.
On receiving a call from John Laurinaitis about his release:
It was weird. Johnny [Laurinaitis] called me and I thought hey that’s a rare call from Johnny. I’m like ‘Hey Johnny how are you doing?’ He told me ‘Hey, listen, we’re going to have to release you from your contract.’ I was like ‘OK, cool.’ He went ‘We think the world of you and we would love to work with you again.’ I was like ‘OK yeah absolutely Johnny.’ And honestly I did have a bit of an understanding. Obviously at the time dealing with injuries, coming back and getting ready to get my rehabilitation going, we are in a pandemic all that stuff. I got it, it wasn’t unexpected.
Says he was cool with it but later received a call from Triple H:
But at the same time I was relatively calm about it. I’ve kind of been in this situation before. A younger me probably would have been really freaked out but at this point you roll pivot. That’s really all there is to it in life general. At that point I was setting up the framework for what I was going to do next. A few hours later I get a call from Hunter and that pretty much all kind of changed.
(H/T and transcribed by Inside the Ropes)