Samoa Joe is returning to the indies.
The current AEW Trios Champion will work his first indie match in ten years against Navajo Warrior. This appears to be Warrior's final match, as the 55-year-old has been working in the business for over three decades.
Navajo started his career back in 1989. The veteran has had several matches in WWE, though they were mainly squash matches. Nevertheless, he faced legends such as Yokozuna, Razor Ramon, Owen Hart, and Vader. He would work in WWE sporadically until 2007 and then wrestle in NWA, Impact Zone Wrestling (no relation to TNA), and Arizona Wrestling Federation.
Navajo is currently in the midst of his Last Mile tour and explained during an interview with Wrestling Epicenter why he’s hanging up the boots.
"There are a couple reasons, really.The most important of them is that family comes first. My youngest daughter is starting to embark on her first sport of boxing and with her training, it is starting to take up a lot of my time... And, also, thisyear marks 35 years of wrestling for the Navajo Warrior. So, it is time to scale it back.”
As previously stated, this is the first independent show Joe has worked on since 2015. During that time, he was fresh off his TNA Wrestling run and worked in multiple indies and NXT as well. Triple H initially brought in Joe on a part time basis, but after the huge sales that he garnered, WWE opted to sign him to a full time contract.
Joe is a pretty busy man these days so this is probably a one and done situation, especially since he’s an AEW regular. Add into the fact that he’s working on the Twisted Metal television series and Joe doesn’t need to do the indie’s at this point in his career. Nevertheless, it should be a treat for fans to see Joe outside of the AEW environment.
Joe is fresh off his Forbidden Door win in London as he, Powerhouse Hobbs, and Katsuyori Shibata successfully defended the Trios Titles against Bullet Club War Dogs’ Clark Connors, Drilla Moloney, and Robbie X. Now that Joe is done with Twisted Metal commitments (at least for now) he should be on AEW television regularly.