10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About Samoa Joe

4. The Wellness Policy Violation

Samoa Joe
WWE.com

WWE is clearly eager for each and every one of us to forget about any talents who fail the company's Wellness Policy.

Regardless of the circumstances or of how WWE cannot always be held accountable for such test failures, it's still never a good look for the company whenever they have to publicly announce that one of their wrestlers has been suspended due to testing positive for a banned substance.

For both Samoa Joe and WWE, they'd rather pretend that the talented star wasn't handed a 30-day suspension early last year.

The truth is, 25 February 2020 saw WWE formally announce this suspension, with Joe having breached the company's Wellness Policy for the first time. It has yet to be made public what exactly caused this breach.

At the time of this suspension, Samoa Joe was in the midst of a storyline that saw him alongside Kevin Owens to do battle with Seth Rollins, Buddy Murphy and AOP.

Not only did Joe end up missing WrestleMania 36 partly because of this suspension, but he never had the chance to compete again in a WWE ring before being handed his release earlier this month.

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Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.