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Former TNA creative Vince Russo recently discussed his booking of Samoa Joe and why he didn't get a bigger push during Russo's time as a writer in the promotion.
Samoa Joe was one of the top homegrown talents in TNA before he signed with WWE. However, a lot of TNA fans have always felt that Joe was someone who deserved a bigger push in the company.
On the latest episode of Writing With Russo, Vince Russo opened up about his booking of Samoa Joe in TNA in the early 2000s. Russo revealed why Joe didn't get a bigger push:
"When somebody asks me 'why didn't you do this with Samoa Joe? Why didn't you do that?' Well, you really want to know why we didn't do anything creatively? Well, I'm going to tell you why we didn't. The problem we always had with Samoa Joe, always revolved around weight. It was never that he was a pain in the ass or he wasn't talented or he couldn't do this... it was always weight."
Vince Russo details why he didn't push Samoa Joe during his time in TNA
Vince Russo went on to give more details about his time booking Samoa Joe in TNA.
"If you remember, because of the budgeting at TNA, because TNA did not have a lot of money, sometimes we have to shoot six weeks worth of TV or eight weeks worth of TV, so sometimes you're shooting for two months, which means that after one of those tapings, you may not be seeing the talent for one month or two months. So what would happen, and this always happened, it was like a yoyo... Samoa Joe would come to TV looking great so now we're all excited because physically Samoa Joe could look really good or look really bad."
"He would come to work looking really great so now we're booking for 'Joe was off, Joe lost some weight, Joe is in shape...', now we're booking for that guy. So we'll book six to eight weeks of TV, then we'll go home, we're all excited about Joe, we're writing the next set of TVs and he comes back and he's out of shape and you could tell in the ring. We had these talks with him all the time. We were all upfront with this. This is my POV. There's a huge difference in Samoa Joe when he's in shape and when he's not in shape and you saw it. This happened so many times," Vince Russo said.
Samoa Joe was recently among the 10 stars released by WWE on April 15, a move that shocked many fans.
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