Samoa Joe Hints at His Pro Wrestling Future After WWE Release

Samoa Joe was released for the second time in eight months by the WWE in January. The 42-year-old “Samoan Submission Machine” appeared on Busted Open Radio as a guest host on Tuesday, teasing his future in the world of professional wrestling. After reflecting on his time working as a coach and recruiter for WWE’s Performance Center, Joe said, “We’re training. We’re ready. I’m not on paper with anybody, anywhere, we haven’t signed anything. We’re just kind of exploring our options. I’m taking a little time, personally, to be with the family and sure up things home side. We’ll see what the coming months hold, hopefully, it’ll be positive. I’m not really engaged with anybody or exploring that. I’ve been consumed with my other work, which has been nice, we’re now getting back to pro wrestling and seeing where we go from here.”

“I’m open to whatever opportunity,” he added. “At this point, I’m blessed enough that I get to make decisions and get to work on things outside of wrestling, which is a rarity when you’re this far in and committed to the business. The discussions haven’t happened yet. I’ve got my team working on stuff and when they eventually connect, we’ll see if something gets worked out.”

Where do you think Joe should go next? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments! Elsewhere in the interview, Joe confirmed that he tested positive for COVID-19 in the weeks following NXT TakeOver 36, resulting in him relinquishing the NXT Championship right before the NXT 2.0 reboot. He did not return to WWE programming before getting cut in January.

“By then, Vince [McMahon] wanted to go in a different direction with NXT and he wanted to have the new opening with NXT 2.0 be with a bang and I agreed with him. I said, ‘If that’s the case, this is probably what’s best for what your vision is for this product.’ I went behind the scenes and started working with talent on a one-to-one basis, pulling guys individually in open gyms, working with them, and focusing on these new tremendous prospects [that] were brought in and people that were hungry to learn and excited about this newfound opportunity,” Joe said. “It was invigorating for me. When you’re working with younger talent that are hungry and want to succeed on a high level, it amps up your own spirit. I was delving into that heavily. Working with Matt Bloom on revising things, training techniques, and evaluating what we were doing already and seeing if we could do it better. That was really the end of my tenure at WWE.”

h/t Fightful