In an interview with Fightful.com, Samoa Joe was asked about wrestlers going to bat for him when it came to a possible WWE run:
“Oh, there were tons here for years. Years. Vince vehemently opposed me being in WWE. He didn’t know me, wasn’t familiar with me. And now we have a great relationship, everything’s working fine. I think he just realize he already bought it, so he might as well use it. No, like I said, with every partner I’ve ever worked with it’s about time and understanding. And we’ve had some time and we’ve had some understanding. It’s working out pretty well,” Joe continued.
Joe also talked about how he felt like he wasn’t appreciated by other promotions as well:
“Everywhere that I’ve gone—ROH I remember walking into and Gabe Sapolsky telling me, ‘listen, we can’t afford to fly you in from California, you’ll never work here again, but thanks for coming tonight,’ and shortly afterwards ‘hey, you’re working every show from here until forever,’” Joe said.
“TNA was very much the same thing, ‘Hey you’re an internet guy. We don’t have television. We’re gonna bring you in and I don’t know what we’ll use for you afterwards.’ Then obviously that went well. And it was the same thing here. I’ve never had a nice entry into a company, nobody’s ever said “oh, man, we can’t wait to have you here.” It’s like I show up and they’re like “Oh, why didn’t we hire you sooner?” And, I mean, there’s some satisfaction in that. But that’s been par for the course my entire career.”
