Samoa Joe’s Status After Vacating WWE NXT Title

Samoa Joe vacated the NXT Title days before the brand is set to introduce a new “2.0”setup. Many fans thought the timing of this announcement was very interesting, and some are wondering what is next for Samoa Joe at this point.

Joe is still with WWE, because he was hired on for more than just a wrestler role. Dave Meltzer broke this down during Wrestling Observer Radio to explain the situation, and there is a lot to unpack in this situation.

“It’s a weird story. He’s still with the company. But I don’t know if he’s going to be wrestling much because the only thing I heard officially from WWE on this, because I contacted unofficially a bunch of people who really didn’t know anything – he’d actually said this before people in NXT even had an idea any of this was going on, so it wasn’t like they knew anything.”

“But the official thing that I was just told is that he was hired to be more of an administrator or whatever, like a front office person, more than a wrestler, so that’s gonna be his job. The thing with him and Kross drew interest, it was a big deal in NXT, but they’re going in a different direction. Why he couldn’t lose the title (in a match instead of vacating it) beats me.”

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“There’s many unanswered questions in this story. If he’s gonna be able to wrestle in a couple of weeks, or a short period of time, stripping him kind of makes no sense. There’s a lot of vagueness and when there’s vagueness there’s probably a lot more to it than has come out.”

“But my impression is that he’s going to be wrestling less going forward, because again, the idea of NXT now is to develop stars for the future, and Joe is in his 40s and in future, he’s gonna be a coach and a trainer and things like that, based on what I was told.”

We’ll have to see who wins the NXT Title next. Samoa Joe wished them the best of luck, but he also provided a warning that he will be back to reclaim the championship. This could be a very interesting time for NXT, especially considering how the brand is set to reveal a brand new facelift this week.

What’s your take on this story? Sound off in the comments!