Samoa Joe Gives His Honest Opinion of AEW and the Forbidden Door With Other Wrestling Promotions

AEW President and CEO Tony Khan is all about kicking open the “forbidden door” between promotions. He has made a business alliance with NJPW, Lucha Libre AAA, and Impact which allows wrestlers to cross over. However, NXT Champion Samoa Joe is not on board with the idea.

Joe is also a former ROH World Champion and Multi-time Impact world champion. Earlier this year, he was released from WWE but came back upon Triple H’s requests. He won the NXT Title from Karrion Kross at NXT TakeOver 36.

Recently, he came to So Catch by Hal 2 and spoke about a lot of things including the ‘forbidden door.’ Being an alumnus of several indie promotions in the business deal, Joe is not excited about the idea.

“I work for a company,” Joe said. “If I played for a major football club, you wouldn’t lend me out on the weekend to go play for the rival team. Messi’s ain’t doing day shifts over at Manchester United.”

Although he understands that fans love this type of crossovers, but it has a good chance of becoming a mess. “Nobody wants to look bad in that situation, everyone’s getting pushed and pulled in a certain way and it becomes a convoluted mess.”

As a champion, Joe is currently focusing on competition. He is not overseeing the production side of things.

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Samoa Joe on advising his younger self

The ‘Samoan Submission Machine’ has been in the business for two decades now. He has fought in all the major promotions in the world including Impact, Ring of Honor, and Lucha Libre AAA.

When asked what advice would he give his younger self, Joe said he would tell himself to take it easy. He never thought he would go on this long and he “would’ve wrapped it up ten years ago.”

“I never really envisioned it would be the lifelong pursuit that it’s become. It’s not that I didn’t want it to be, it was just young me always kind of thought in very blocked off time blocks,” he said.

“I wanted to be at certain places at a certain time in my life. And I think a lot of young me are very much the same. But yeah, it never occurred to me some twenty-odd years later that I’d be here doing this.”

This week on NXT, various competitors emerged to challenge Joe. Pete Dunne, Tomasso Ciampa, Kyle O’Reilley, and LA Knight all want to face Joe next.

Who do you think will face Joe for the NXT title? Let us know in the comments below.