At NXT TakeOver 36, Samoa Joe made history when he won his third NXT Championship.
Now that he’s back on top of the black-and-gold brand, Joe is looking forward to mixing it up with NXT’s deep roster, and there are any number of stars who could step up to him.
In an interview with So Catch, Joe named WALTER and Ilja Dragunov as two potential opponent’s he’d like to defend the title against, in addition to some of the “obvious” choices like Pete Dunne and Kyle O’Reilly.
“I think a lot of the choices are obvious,” said Joe. “gGuys like Pete Dunne, Kyle O’Reilly, you’ve got Adam Cole, you have WALTER. I mean, I think the NXT UK roster alone, you got a lot of guys, Ilja Dragunov, these guys who are just champing at the bit, and they’re looking for these fights. We’re here to find out, so we’ll see.
“You never know what will happen, I guess you gotta stay tuned in.”
Joe’s championship victory comes at a time when there’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding NXT. WWE President Nick Khan recently stated that the brand will be undergoing a “complete revamp”, so many fans are at the very least curious to see what’s next. Some of the discourse about these changes includes some concern that NXT isn’t as important as it once was to Vince McMahon, but Joe shared his belief that the chairman remains “heavily invested” in the brand. He even argued that McMahon is NXT’s “biggest proponent.”
“I think he perceives it as the future of his company,” said Joe. “I think that he’s heavily invested in it and it’s funny, like I read all this stuff and I hear from people and at the time time, he’s probably the biggest proponent of its existence and much of what has happened in it thus far.
“So yeah, NXT is the future of WWE and it’s a big reason why I’m excited to be kind of associated with it because I get to delve into the future, I get to work on new things and new projects and introduce new stars to the world. And that’s something that, at this point in my career, I’m very very excited to do.”
The full interview is available here:
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