Samoa Joe is still one of the biggest stars to have ever passed through the doors of TNA Wrestling. Debuting in 2005 as part of the company's X-Division, the "Samoan Submission Machine" went on a 17 month run where he wasn't pinned or submitted, and would eventually go on to be one of the few men to hold every championship the company had on offer at the time. Considering how important Joe was to TNA during the company's golden era of the 2000s, one would think that he holds his time with them in high regard. However, during a recent appearance on the "Insight"podcast, Joe explained that he wasn't blown away by TNA initially, seeing it as just another booking.
"To be honest, not a tremendous amount when it started. I had some less-than-good interactions with TNA early on." Joe explained that he was the Ring of Honor World Champion when TNA first got in touch with him, but thanks to the fact that he was making very good money working for ROH, he was in a position to turn them down.
"When I got the call for TNA, TNA didn't have any TV. They had lost the weekly pay-per-views. People kind of forget about this. Was a transitional period. They lost the weekly pay per views. I think Dixie was just about to get involved, she hadn't yet. They had called me up and before they had offered me a gig, they said, 'Hey, can you come out and have a try-out match?' I said, Sure, just send me the ticket and whatever the pay is. Then they called back and said, 'Oh we don't fly people out and there will be no pay.' I called back and said, 'Well, I'm not interested, thanks.' And I hung up."
The former AEW World Champion went on to reveal that TNA approached him for a second time, this time offering him the role of a bodyguard for Johnny Fairplay. However, they wanted to change his name to "Reality Joe," and considering that he had developed a strong following in ROH and on the independent scene as Samoa Joe, he turned them down again. Later down the line, TNA thought that the third time of asking would be the charm for them, and this time they made some progress.
"The third time they had lost their TV, they were only doing internet showcase shows. I get a call they said, 'Hey, we'd like to you bring in. We're going to fly you in, we're going to pay all this stuff.' I was like, hey, it's a good start. Alright, we're really talking here. [They said] 'We want to give you a look. We're kind of in between TV deals', stuff like that, so I just kind of considered it a booking. I didn't really think it was going to be a long-term thing. Went there, had the match. They loved it, called me back and they wanted to hire me full-time. I didn't want to be there full-time because they didn't have a TV deal."
Joe's debut for TNA came at the 2005 Slammiversary pay-per-view where he defeated Sonjay Dutt, a match that came at a time where the Joe had won the ROH Pure Championship a few weeks earlier. TNA and ROH had a frosty relationship by this point as TNA had pulled all of their talent from working ROH events in 2004 after ROH founder Rob Feinstein was caught trying to solicit sex from someone he thought was an underage boy.
Knowing that they almost had their man secured, TNA would persist in their pursuit of Samoa Joe throughout the summer of 2005, a time where Joe would regularly wrestle for the company despite not officially signing for them. Shortly after, partly due to the fact that WWE's deal with the network was expiring and they were moving back to the USA Network, Spike TV struck a deal with TNA in the fall of 2005, which was enough to convince Joe to go full-time with the company.
"I remember Terry Taylor at the time, who I love now and we have a great relationship, was really pressuring me, sign this deal, sign this deal, sign this deal. I'm not going to sign this deal, I'm working for ROH and I'm not going to be exclusive to you for whatever this is and give up that money. It's crazy. They couldn't believe that. 'Well, we're a big company, we had TV.' I'm like, you had TV? Okay, great! It was really a weird process. Then my agent at the time got wind that a TV deal was forthcoming and he just goes, Hey, we're just going to wait it out until they get TV. And we did. And then when we got TV I said, I'll take that contract now, it worked out a lot better."
Joe would continue to wrestle regularly for ROH as part of his deal until 2007, after which he work solely for TNA. Outside of sporadic independent dates, Joe worked for TNA full-time until 2015 before leaving at the end of his contract, and after a brief return to ROH, he would sign a multi-year deal with WWE as part of the "WWE NXT" brand, later that same year.
Please credit "Insight" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
