In an interview with thenewstribune.com, Samoa Joe was asked if he felt like WWE would never hire him:
“We all do, it’s something that we all feel. I think for us, we get these questions all the time on did we ever think we’d make it into WWE and for all three of us we had been labeled as either too big or too small and they’d say, WWE would never hire you. We were told that from literally day one. I remember [Daniel Bryan] got signed early on and then he got released early on at the very, very start of his career.”
“I know that every time I’m in the locker room and I’m working for some company in Malaysia or Germany and Japan I kept seeing the same guys from America in the locker room. I would be Daniel, it would by AJ. I think Bryan broke the mold for a lot of us guys who had been told they don’t fit the WWE model and I think it opened up the doors for a lot of guys to be successful in this company.”
