During a recent appearance on Chris Jericho’s podcast, Samoa Joe revealed that a main roster spot was never promised by WWE officials when he first appeared for the company in NXT that later turned into an official deal.
Joe, who made a name for himself on the independent scene with Ring of Honor and later with a lengthy run in TNA from 2005-2015, made his NXT debut in May of 2015 and officially debuted on the main roster earlier this year in February.
Excerpt courtesy of WrestlingInc.
“I think the initial idea was, ‘let’s just bring him in for NXT’ and we got such a good response with everything that it kind of really blew up even beyond that and here I am on the main roster and really to the company’s credit, it wasn’t something that was set in stone. Like, the scenario that was laid out before me was like, ‘listen, we can use you here in NXT, but we don’t really think that it’ll go much beyond that.’ I really wasn’t worried. It was kind of a foot-in-the-door deal and I had a lot of good people rooting for me at the time.”