At the time of his most recent release from WWE, Samoa Joe was more focused on the health of his friend, Triple H, who was dealing with a cardiac event.
“As Triple H, dealing with his situation which I obviously knew about and was way more concerned about than my employment, Regal and his departure, I knew the writing was on the wall for me, which is fine, we were a big collective team and a big collective think tank within the company, and we went a different way.
As for the release, it’s an up and down process for a lot of people, for me it’s freedom up to pursue a lot of projects that I’ve wanted to work on. It freed me up to start talking with Tony and the future with what he wanted to do and I was very surprised that it matched up.”
– Samoa Joe
Samoa Joe at the ROH Supercard Of Honor post-show media scrum would also talk about how him returning to WWE after his first release even happened in the first place:
“My going back to WWE was majorly because of the people I worked with and relationships I built in the company, mainly, two people in Triple H and William Regal,”
– Samoa Joe following the ROH Supercard of Honor show, where he made his debut at the conclusion of the event.
Tony Khan, owner of All Elite Wrestling and ROH announced after Joe’s debut that he was officially All Elite last night
H/T to WrestlingINC for the transcription
