During a recent appearance on the “Out of Character with Ryan Satin” podcast, Samoa Joe commented on working with Brock Lesnar in WWE, feuding with AJ Styles, and more. You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On his experience working with Brock Lesnar in WWE: “I think if you are in this industry, Brock is the type of match you should be seeking out. When you get into this industry, you should be gunning to work with top, top guys. Brock was the top, top guy. When I was given the opportunity, I did my very best to make the most of it any time I was in the ring with him. It’s important. You’ve gotta have a goalpost and bar of excellence that you maintain. It’s easy when you have guys like Brock and Kurt Angle and Roman [Reigns] – these are all gentlemen who you push yourself because they push. For me, it’s a good symbiotic relationship because they’re gonna give as hard they get and vice versa. So, any time I get an opportunity to get in the ring with performers like Randy Orton – guys who are at the top of their game and they do their very best to get the most out of their opponents – when that happens, you start producing really, really great stuff.”
On whether the Lesnar match ranks at the top of his WWE matches: “I think so. I think just the whole experience in general. The leadup to it, the work I got to do with Paul Heyman – he’s a brilliant orator and brilliant performer. Any time I get to be in the ring with him and do what I do, it’s always a pleasure. It was all of that. I rank the whole experience, not just the match, pretty high on my personal favorites in my career.”
On his memorable feud with AJ Styles on SmackDown in 2018: “That was probably one of my more favorite things I’ve done in my career. But a lot of it too was that feud was the best encapsulation of what the best of us is in WWE with their style and what they do. They have the ability to produce something like that because we can go a little more in-depth, and we can go out to the house and have me sit on the front porch with the camera crew and say horrible, somewhat threatening things and give me the license to work with what I was saying and let me be me. It was a lot of fun. Road Dogg was instrumental in that at the time and we’d come up with great stuff. Working with AJ and Wendy [AJ’s wife] was great. I’ve known the man forever and he’s practically a brother to me. It was funny because I’ve known Wendy forever and it was such a departure of how I view Wendy and how I’ve known her 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 anybody or anything look great. Being in the ring with him is always a pleasure. It’s never not awesome.”
(h/t – 411 Wrestling)
