Samoa Joe was not shocked at all to see CM Punk return to wrestling.
Samoa Joe and CM Punk and their Trilogy of matches in 2004 helped establish Ring of Honor as a must-see independent promotion.
As time went on, CM Punk and Samoa Joe would never cross paths inside the squared circle again. CM Punk would go to WWE in 2005 and Samoa Joe would spend the majority of his career in TNA Wrestling before finally going to WWE one year after CM Punk left the company.
Now, seeing Punk is back in the pro wrestling industry and Samoa Joe says on the latest Kurt Angle podcast but he was not surprised in the slightest to see CM Punk return and he assumed that once CM Punk was back in front of wrestling audiences as part of WWE Backstage on FS1 that CM Punk was at least considering a return to the pro wrestling.
"No, no. If I know one thing about Punk: if he's out on something, he's out on it. You won't see him being around it, you won't see him looking at it, you won't see him staring at it, it's out of his life and the minute I saw him on the FOX set, I knew his eyes were turning back towards it, and I think he was just looking for the right place at the right time and he wanted to be happy with it and I think he is. From what I've seen, I would gather that he is, so I'm stoked for him and I'm and I'm happy to see him back."
Reflecting on the trilogy of matches they shared in 2004, Samoa Joe would say that it was a pivotal point in his career due to the exposure it gave both men and the way it forced him to push his limits.
"Tremendously important for a lot of reasons, both from a career standpoint and from a business standpoint. It was an opportunity to kind of explore bounds that, personally, I'd never really explored before, doing the longer format matches doing the 60-minute matches and got me acquainted to what I was able to do and if I push myself and go out there. It was a great creative effort, you know, anytime you're in there with Punk, he's got a tremendously creative mind, great collaborative [effort] going back and forth. It's always very easy to come up with something great with him. It was a special time and it's something I really enjoyed, and I definitely do highlight [the trio of matches] as a very important point in my career."
CM Punk and Samoa Joe both share a mindset of not wallowing in the regrets of yesterday. Further illustrating this point, elsewhere on the podcast, Samoa Joe spoke about not regretting any point of his WWE career.
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