Samoa Joe Says Vince McMahon Didn’t Want Him In WWE

Samoa Joe has now been with WWE for over 4 years now, having debuted in NXT on May 20th, 2015. Joe made his debut on the main roster on January 30th, 2017. According to Joe, Vince McMahon was initially not on board with him being brought in. He spoke to Fightful recently about his relationship with Vince and not being appreciated at first by promotions he’s worked for.

“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.”

You can watch the full interview in the player below:

Samoa Joe on Relationship With Vince McMahon

Joe also commented that many people have gone to bat for him over the years to Vince.

“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.

• Samoa Joe Offers Prediction For Brock Lesnar vs. Matt Riddle Fight