AEW’s newest signing Samoa Joe has said he tried to help WWE obtain the rights to Ring of Honor’s video library during his time with the company.
At last night’s Ring of Honor: Supercard of Honor XV event Joe made a surprise appearance to end the show.
Afterward, Tony Khan announced via tweet that the former NXT Champion has signed with AEW.
Speaking during the post-show media scrum, Joe said he was surprised by Khan’s purchase of Ring of Honor last month:
“[Tony Khan buying ROH] was a major surprise to me, especially coming from my former position and how hard I was pushing to buy the library for the other company. It let me know why it was being such a difficult process. When that did come up, at the same, having Tony have it and know how much he loves wrestling and knowing how much he loved ROH and product, just from our meetings and the time knowing each other, I knew it would be good hands. I knew it would be treated with respect and it would be kind of made available to the fans in the best way possible. I was very happy with it.”
Joe spent much of his WWE career injured due to a series of concussions, but is optimistic about his health now as he said:
“I’m more than confident. You have to understand, coming into WWE, that is me coming off a 15-year-plus career of probably the worst medical care a guy can get and going into a very very arduous schedule. I did have a few injuries, one of them being the major concussion that took me out for a while. Honestly, I took extra time. When it comes to brain injuries and stuff like that, I wasn’t willing to risk going back quickly and potentially harming myself permanently. It’s just a dumb thing to do.
“We have too much science on our side and too much knowledge now that we can pull back and treat things properly and take time to heal. I took the time to do that and that was really my major issue, I was taking the right amount of time to make sure I was ready to come back to the ring. As for my last injury, obviously, it was more a circumstance of the world we all live in now and it pops up here and there. I’ve been healthy, I’m more than ready to go, and I’m excited.”
Joe will appear on next week’s AEW Dynamite.
