Samoa Joe Reveals How WWE Cleared Him To Wrestle In NXT

Samoa Joe is set for a barnburner of a match at NXT TakeOver: 36 on August 22nd. He will have a war against Karrion Kross with the NXT Title on the line. The contest is likely to be incredibly still, but this is not happening on the main roster where Joe was previously medically disqualified.

Joe hasn’t wrestled in a very long time. He suffered a concussion while taking a table bump during the commercial shoot for WWE’s “Must Be Mondays” campaign. That head injury put him on the sidelines, but he was later used as a color commentator on RAW.

While speaking to After The Bell, Samoa Joe revealed the long process that he went through in order to get medically cleared to compete again.

“I kept it simple. It was just getting healthy. A lot of times, people have a tendency to overcomplicate their problems and make them worse and adding to them by adding extra pressure. My focus was simply to just get healthy. No other expectations to put on it, no expectations to return to the ring. No expectations other than getting back to where I should be and getting my brain healthy and my body healthy. That was my main focus. I told people around me that was my approach. See how my body came along, see how I felt, be careful with it, take extra time, and really concentrate on getting better. That was my main focus and what helped me. (I wasn’t) thinking about ‘man, will I ever be back in the ring?’”

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“A lot of it was having the hindsight and seeing others I knew going through similar struggles and gathering the wealth of knowledge and taking the doctors advice and asking a lot of questions from others who have dealt with it throughout their career and making the best health decision for me. Once we got through that process and got comfortable with that, we started concentrating on getting back in the ring and finding the best ways and opportunity. During that entire time, I like to keep busy and I’m never one to shirk away from work. When the opportunity came to do commentary and to do a panel or other things, I jumped at the chance.”

“It was a much worse type of injury than I had dealt with before. It scared me, it scared a lot of people I cared about. It became very easy to make that the focus as far as what I wanted to do when I came back. Inevitably, it all hinged on making sure I was alright and feeling good and when I came back to the ring, I didn’t want to come back in a 70% or 60% capacity. I wanted to make sure I could come back and give the best I could to the fans. I do play my cards close to my chest, but that’s just the belief I have.” 

Karrion Kross is already listed on the RAW internal roster according to PW Insider, so it’s likely that he will be full-time main roster Superstar soon enough. We will have to see what WWE’s plan for Kross is at this point, because those plans have already changed significantly with Jeff Hardy’s positive COVID-19 test.

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Thanks to Fightful for the quote