Hall Of Famer Explains Why Samoa Joe Was Never WWE Champion Under Vince McMahon
Samoa Joe has been a World Champion in other wrestling promotions and a WWE Hall of Famer explained why Vince McMahon didn’t see him in that spot.
As the current Ring Of Honor TV Champion, Samoa Joe knows what it’s like to hold championship gold. Joe was a World Champion in the original Ring of Honor in the early 2000s, then he went to TNA in the mid-2000s and won every title they had there including the World Title.
In 2015, Samoa Joe finally joined WWE where he became the NXT Champion (a title he held three times) before eventually joining the main roster. While on the WWE main roster, Joe was a two-time United States Champion, but that was the only title he won.
During that WWE run that lasted for about seven years, Samoa Joe feuded with the likes of Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns over the Universal Title while also having a rivalry with AJ Styles over the WWE Title. Joe came close to winning a “World” Title in WWE a few times, yet he came up short.
Vince McMahon was “pretty high” on Samoa Joe
Brian “Road Dogg” James is a WWE Hall of Famer who’s a former lead writer on Smackdown as well. On his “Oh You Didn’t Know” podcast, Road Dogg spoke about Samoa Joe not becoming WWE Champion perhaps because he was a heel character.
“Vince is a babyface champion guy, and I get that from a promotional standpoint, you’re not going to promote JBL, you’re going to promote Cena. I don’t know, I just feel like maybe that had something to do with it.”
As he continued, Road Dogg spoke about Joe’s final run in WWE with Triple H wanting him to be part of NXT again.
“I think Hunter realized that when he brought him back down to “NXT,” even if you can’t do nothing, just come and talk for us because you’re so good at it, and you have such great facials when you cut a promo.”
While speaking about Joe some more, Road Dogg added that Vince McMahon really liked him and so did Triple H.
“I know Vince was high on him and I know Hunter was high on him. It just makes me think there was something medical that wasn’t out there or something that was a reason he went away and came back, I don’t know the answer to that. He went pretty high, he just didn’t win the title, you know what I mean?”