Samoa Joe talks about winning the WWE NXT Championship at a house show in 2016.
Samoa Joe captured his first championship in WWE, the NXT Championship, with a victory over Finn Balor at a house show in Lowell, Massachusetts, in April 2016. At the time, title changes at house shows were very rare in WWE, especially in NXT.
Samoa Joe reflected on this victory during a panel appearance at Terrificon in 2024. Joe says he thought the move was smart because it taught fans anything could happen and increased the value of NXT's untelevised events.
“I thought it was one of the most brilliant things we did. When you’re building a new brand like we were with NXT, a major thing is that we want people to come to our live events. We were running live events around the nation. If you knew that if you showed up to a NXT live event that a world title could change hands, I mean, it just makes that event so much more exciting. So much more fan interaction. Potentially on one night, any given Sunday you could see something amazing happen. That was kind of the thought process behind it and I’m so glad we did it that way.”
Samoa Joe became the first man to hold the NXT Championship on two separate occasions, later defeating Shinsuke Nakamura at NXT TakeOver: Toronto in 2016 before dropping it back to Nakamura in Japan.
Samoa Joe is now in AEW and says that, with the remaining days of his career, he wants to focus on giving the fans what they want. Read his comments here.
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