Josh Stewart of the Long Island Press interviews TNA World Heavyweight Champion Samoa Joe.

Going Toe-To-Toe With Samoa Joe

By Josh Stewart

A quarter century ago, Vince McMahon started venturing past his New York base, his first steps toward taking over the pro wrestling industry. You wonder if Total Nonstop Action’s performers feel the same way as they head back to New York, slowly attempting to supplant the juggernaut that is WWE.

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Heading the charge is World Heavyweight Champion Samoa Joe, who recently did a phone interview with the Long Island Press. A guy nicknamed “The Samoan Submission Machine” isn’t going hold back much in the ring. You can say the same thing about a conversation with him.

Long Island Press: One thing that has attracted talent to TNA is running fewer shows, thereby offering a more balanced life for people. How do you grow the company and still offer that option to people, since it’s seemingly been such an important part of the company’s growth in the first place?

Samoa Joe: Well, to be quite honest with you, I’m already on that [WWE-type] schedule. Guys like myself, A.J. Styles, Black Machismo, it goes up and down the line. A lot of us are already fulfilling that schedule. For some of the company, it is an easier schedule. They’ve worked hard throughout the years, and believe me, if anybody feels they deserve some time off it’s me. But I know that right now TNA is running full-steam. We’re running house shows every week and we’re in different parts of the country every week. And I know I’m out five days a week on the road. It’s kind of just the nature of the business. You’ve gotta keep going out there and giving the shows to the people, and that’s exactly what we’ve been doing.

LIP: The constant question with TNA seems to be the ex-WWE guys coming in and taking opportunities away from homegrown talent. How much of that is valid, and how often is that used an excuse?

SJ: I don’t think it’s drawn along those lines. As far as camera time and who’s seen out there, that’s really the creative team, that’s TNA, that’s what they’ve come up with. If you showed up to your job, and they said you’ve gotta do this, you do what you’re asked. You do what you’re told. And that’s part of being in the TNA environment. When we show up to work, hey, we’re told this. This is what you’ve got on the show, this is what you’re doing. You know what, that’s what my boss said, that’s what I’m supposed to do. You go out there and do it, and you do it to the best of your ability. And from there, hopefully they’ll see something in that, and they’ll give you the more time, if you desire it, that you need. I think that right there is kind of the quintessential thing that I think a lot of inquisitive wrestling fans, wrestling fans who follow in the industry itself, kind of find hard to understand. At the end of the day, just like when you go to your job, you do it to the best of your ability, and you go from there.

LIP: But with so many ex-WWE guys coming in do you feel that the “glass ceiling” that TNA supposedly didn’t have has been created?

SJ: I’ll say this much: I would be a hypocrite if I did say that, because you’re currently talking to the World Heavyweight Champion. So for me to say, “Oh, yeah, I’ve hit the wall,” it would hold no weight. In my case it doesn’t. There’s always going to be people in our company, WWE, ROH, even in indy wrestling who say you’ve hit a glass ceiling, you’ve done this, you’ve done that. But at the same time, it’s those people that kind of suck it up and  persevere and do what they can do to overcome those types of obstacles, they are the ones who are inevitably going to survive and rise to the top. And that in and of itself is just a part of the wrestling business as a whole, not just centered in TNA, in WWE, in any particular company. It is across the board, everywhere you go, everywhere you’ve worked in wrestling. Even in Japan. How long were Mutoh, Chono and, God rest his soul, Hashimoto, at the top and there were several younger wrestlers trying to break through? I think that’s the thing that people fail to realize when they look around is that it’s everywhere in wrestling.

For the full interview, see The Long Island Press.

TNA live events: Friday, Sept. 5 at the Capital One Bank Theatre at Westbury; Saturday, Sept. 6 at the Manhattan Center in NYC; and Sunday, Sept. 7 at the Times Union Center in Albany. Visit www.ticketmaster.com for details.