Samoa Joe reflects on his 60-minute matches with CM Punk from Ring of Honor in 2004.
During a time when one-hour broadways were no longer commonplace in professional wrestling, Samoa Joe and CM Punk had two matches that went 60 minutes for the Ring of Honor World Championship in 2004 eventually, they would have a final match where Joe would beat CM Punk but those first two matches were draws and now, Samoa Joe is reflecting on those matches.
Speaking on AEW Unrestricted, Joe explains the difficulties of working with 60-minute matches and what he enjoyed about having the opportunity to make history with CM Punk.
"The biggest difficulty is kind of getting over the mental stigma," Joe said. "I know, for me, you think, 'Oh man, it's just it's hard to really go those lengths and to keep the crowd engaged and keep everything going.' That's the biggest thing and then once you're in there and it's funny, I think after the 15-minute mark, your body kind of falls into a rhythm. Mentally you fall into a rhythm, you're locked in, at least for me. Then like I said when you're in the ring with guys who are talented and both of those individuals, make that 60-minutes move at a blistering pace. So it was something that kind of was lost with the annals of time and television, to be able to kind of do that and 60-minute match or have that much time in the modern era was such a rarity and such a cool experience and there were fun matches."
You can see the first of those 60-minute matches in the video embedded above.
Joe and CM Punk are both currently working for AEW but have yet to interact on television.
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