Samoa Joe Was “Thinking About Hanging It Up” Before AEW Move
Samoa Joe has revealed that he thought about retiring as a pro wrestler before he signed with AEW due to some health concerns he had at the time.
The AEW run of Samoa Joe has seen the wrestling veteran dominate the competition. Joe is now a two-time TNT Champion after winning the title back from Darby Allin on the February 1st edition of Dynamite. In addition to that, Joe is also the ROH TV Champion.
In January 2022, Samoa Joe was released by WWE for the second time and he debuted with AEW/ROH at the Supercard of Honor show in April.
When Joe signed with AEW, it came at a time when he hadn’t wrestled very often for the previous two years. Joe suffered multiple concussions in early 2020, so his last WWE match was in NXT in August 2021 when he beat Karrion Kross.
While talking to Renee Paquette on The Sessions podcast, Samoa Joe spoke about why he signed with AEW while also talking about his physical state at the time.
“All the money they threw at me. Immediately, threw all my morals away…no [laughs]. I was legitimately thinking about hanging it up for health reasons.”
“Still coming off the concussion and still dealing with the very end effects of that and getting back in the ring healthy and transitioning back to a physical state where it’s like I can do something for a good period of time and not want to pass out.”
As Joe continued, he spoke about how taking a year off from wrestling and doing commentary in WWE helped him a lot.
“I basically caught two concussions very close together, which is terrible. To that point, I did take a year off to do commentary, which helped me tremendously and I do not regret taking that time. I wouldn’t change it for anything. That allowed me to get healthy and get my mind back together and get back into a place where I felt confident even doing anything physical.”
“I realize that if I were to rush that and done that, I probably, inevitably, would not have returned to the ring at all. I am happy I handled that well, despite wanting to get after it.”
The 43-year-old Samoa Joe has done very well in AEW with a 15-2 record and it looks like his feud with Wardlow will be starting up again very soon.