Every WWE Release Of 2021 - Where Are They Now? (Five Years Later)

Then: "Daddy go night night".

Those immortal words should follow Samoa Joe wherever he goes. Coming from almost anyone else, they'd sound silly, but he made it work when feuding with ex-TNA colleague AJ Styles during the peak of his WWE run. By 2021, Joe had morphed into more of an announcer, but he did make an in-ring comeback to dethrone Karrion Kross for the NXT Title at TakeOver 36 (the final one) in August.

This was actually a shock return for Joe - he'd been released in April 2021 whilst working as a colour commentator on Raw. Corey Graves replaced him there, and Vince McMahon elected to go in a different direction by turning NXT into NXT 2.0, but the Samoan had the last laugh.

Now: Joe left WWE again and immediately signed a deal to play power forward in Tony Khan's new vision for the offshoot ROH brand. It wasn't long before he outgrew Ring Of Honor (not for the first time in his career) and started turning up on mainline AEW shows like Dynamite though.

Samoa Joe has always been undeniable as a pure in-ring talent. He can work with anybody, and he always makes the best of any situation he's in. Currently, Joe is on the injured list but wants to make an impact upon his return. It's pretty obvious that he's going to; Khan adores the man, and rightly so.

Those who watched WWE during the closed door pandemic era might point out that he'd come in handy as a commentator once he hangs up the boots too. Why not? Bryan Danielson did, and Joe has already shown he can do the gig.