Samoa Joe On What A Wrestler Has To Do If They Work With Brock Lesnar
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| Pic: WWE |
“I think if you’re in this industry, Brock is the type of match you should be seeking out,” Joe said. “When you get into this industry, you should be gunning to work with the top, top guys. Brock was the top, top guy. When I was given the opportunity, I did my best to make the most of it every time I was in the ring with him. It’s important. You’ve got to have kind of a goal post and a bar of excellence that you maintain. It’s easy when you’ve got guys like Brock, guys like Kurt Angle, guys like Roman. You push yourself because they push.
“For me it’s a good symbiotic relationship, because they’re going to give as hard as they get and vice versa. Any time I get an opportunity to get in the ring with those type of performers, a Randy Orton, these are guys who are at the top of their game. They do their very best to push their opponents. And they’re not going to give you an inch, and you’ve got to push back and can’t give them an inch. When that happens, there’s a weird symbiosis because you start producing really great stuff, because t’s a struggle out there and and you’re getting after it.”
Joe went on to say that the storyline and bout with Brock was one of his career's greatest. He also acknowledged that they wanted to give fans the impression that things between them were very personal, as if a real fight may erupt at any time.
“That’s the kind of energy you’ve got to have when you’re out there with Brock,” Joe said. “He probably won’t respect anything less than that. If you don’t show up saying you’re going to try and kick his teeth in and you’re coming after him, he ain’t trying to hear it. You’ve got to keep that energy with him. That’s kind of what I’m alluding to. You’ve got to match that intensity. You can’t walk into this kind of half assed and going ‘oh I hope this works out. How are you sir? Can’t wait to get out there and get after it.’ You’ve got to just go get it. Brock has no qualms about getting into it with anybody. It makes for a nice combination.”
Joe's fight with longtime adversary AJ Styles was another highlight of his career. Prior to entering WWE, the two wrestled together in TNA and Ring of Honor before reigniting their feud on the Smackdown brand in 2018. Joe believed that this version of their feud, which included Styles' wife Wendy, was permitted to go deeper than earlier versions.
“It’s probably one of my more favorite things that I’ve one in my career,” Joe said. “I think that feud was the best encapsulation of what the best of us is in WWE, in their style and what they do. They have the ability to produce something like that, because we can go a little bit more in depth. We can have me go out to the house and have me sit on the front porch with the camera crew and say horrible, somewhat threatening things. And just kind of giving me the license to kind of work with what I was saying and kind of let me be me.
“It was a lot of fun. Road Dogg was really instrumental in a lot of that at the time. We’d come up with some great stuff. Working with AJ was great, working with Wendy was great. I’ve known the man forever and he’s practically a brother to me. For me it was just very, very funny because I’ve known Wendy forever, and it was such a departure of how I view Wendy and how I’ve known Wendy my entire life. It was fun in that aspect too. AJ is as advertised, he’s phenomenal. Any time I step in the ring with him, it’s probably the easiest thing in the world because he can make anything or anybody look great. And being in the ring with him is always a pleasure. It’s never not awesome.”
Joe worked as a colour commentator on the RAW brand prior to his WWE dismissal and return to NXT. He told Satin that he got the part after being requested to do it one day and it became into a regular gig.
“I think I had done a few spots on the pre-show that they enjoyed, and while I was out injured they asked me if I wanted to come do the color on RAW and I said sure,” Joe said. “I really wasn’t asked to. It was just kind of ‘hey, what are you doing on Monday? Come on in, do some color.’ And it kind of just evolved from there.”
Joe discussed how Byron Saxton and Tom Phillips were instrumental in his growth in the booth, as well as how much he learned about staging a wrestling programme from the commentators' booth. He did confess, though, that the idea of transferring from wrestling to commentary never occurred to him until he took the position while injured.
“No,” Joe said. “No, never really thought about it in depth. Was it something I went ‘oh, that would be kind of cool?’ Yeah. But I never really thought of it as something that I was gunning for, that I would see myself transitioning to after my wrestling. But I had a lot of fun. It was a good time. It was cool seeing a different aspect of the business after being in it so long. Just being on the cans and hearing all the production mayhem and getting a handle for the tremendous effort that goes into producing live television. Even as us wrestlers, we don’t really get the full scope of everything going on behind the scenes and how much these two fall into place at the exact right time. My experience in commentary definitely gave me a greater appreciation of that.”
Credit: Out of Character with Ryan Satin
Thanks: Wrestlinginc
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