In a recent interview with Renee Paquette as part of The Sessions podcast, All Elite Wrestling star Samoa Joe discussed several topics, and revealed that he contemplated retirement before being offered the opportunity to sign with AEW.

“All of the money they threw at me, immediately threw all of my morals away, haha. I was legitimately thinking about hanging it up for health reasons, still coming off the concussion, and still dealing with the very end effects of that and getting back in the ring healthy and transitioning back to a physical state where it’s like, I can do something for a good period of time, and not want to pass out.

I basically caught two concussions very close together, which is terrible. To that point, I did take a year off to do commentary, which helped me tremendously, and I do not regret taking that time off, I wouldn’t change it for anything, that allowed me to get healthy, and to get my mind back together and get back into a place where I felt confident even doing anything physical. I realized that if I were to have rushed that and done that, I probably inevitably would not have returned to the ring at all. I am happy that I handled that well, despite wanting to get after it.”

The full interview is available at this link.