Samoa Joe was brought back to NXT as an enforcer in June, and a few months later, Joe has already resigned from the role and is set to wrestle Karrion Kross at TakeOver 36 later this month.

Many fans have been surprised with how quickly Samoa Joe is wrestling after being brought back to WWE NXT, but he has explained to GiveMeSport that his match with Karrion Kross was always planned for this time:

Joe also opened up about being told that he was "done" with wrestling by fans online, having not wrestled since February 2020:

It didn't surprise me at all. It was what we had been thinking about. I knew that would be the perception. You have to realize that I've had the dirt thrown on my career about two or three times, throughout my career. It's funny, anytime I leave a company or do this or do that; that's the great thing about the internet because you can go back to timestamps of that moment in time of what everyone is thinking. 'Oh, he's done. It's over.' I know you all thought that. That's what you think every time something happens in my career because I don't sit here and talk a lot. It's not because I'm not trying to be transparent, but I'm going through stuff. I'm going through health issues and I don't think it's good to be making statements in a public light when you're dealing with such heavy emotional issues because you have a tendency to be destructive on social media. Because of my plan to focus on getting healthy, getting back in the ring, doing the right things, not putting external social pressure on myself because I see people saying, 'You're done, this is it.' This is what the modern entertainer, athlete, media figure has to deal with nowadays. They have to be able to manage the social pressure as an actual entity as something that can actually affect you during the day, with your professional, personal, and health needs.

Joe then went on to explain that he was brought in as an authority figure to NXT to throw fans off the scent that he was ready to make a return to the ring:

Because of that, I took it in and when I saw everyone saying, 'Joe is done, it's over. I know because he's not talking and all these assinine reasons (when) they don't have any idea about my health or what I was going through or where I was in my recovery, just throwing the dart at the wind. We knew that me coming in as an authority would make everyone think, 'he's just doing a retirement job before he comes back.' We knew. I know how ya'll perceive stuff and how the media frenzy gets any time there is any flux in your career. It was always planned to come back.

You can watch NXT TakeOver 36, where Samoa Joe will challenge Karrion Kross for the NXT Championship, live on the WWE Network on August 22.