Samoa Joe told his church in Tampa that the call that landed him the role of Sweet Tooth in Twisted Metal came four hours after WWE fired him for the second time.
Joe told the story on stage at Grace Family Church, where he has been a member for 18 years, in a conversation with founding pastor Craig Altman that the church posted to YouTube on Sunday.
“Within the span of two months, you know, I had received a concussion, my career was essentially over. And I was sent to the commentary desk, which was awesome, good time. But in that time, I was let go and fired at that time,” Joe said. “I was hired back miraculously, thankfully, and I moved into a more corporate position. But then the corporate structure changed, and two months later I found myself fired again.”
WWE released Joe in April 2021, when he was working as a commentator on Raw. He was rehired that June and returned to NXT, where he won the NXT Championship for a third time before relinquishing it with an injury. He was released again in January 2022, as part of changes to the NXT staff that worked under Triple H.
“It was a rough morning obviously, it’s hard to explain how that happened so close together in the matter of a few weeks,” Joe said. “But I remember walking in at this point and looking at my wife and saying, ‘I got fired.’ And I remember her looking up at me and going, ‘Ah, it’s alright. God’s got this. We’re gonna be fine. We prayed on this already. It’s gonna work out.'”
“Fast forward to four hours later, I receive a phone call from a friend I hadn’t spoken to in upwards of 15 years, and he calls me and goes, ‘Hey, listen, I don’t know what your schedule is, I don’t know if you’re busy, I haven’t talked to you in forever, but I’m doing a brand new TV show for Peacock, I’d love you to come in and star in it. Please, please, please will you send me an audition tape. I think you’re the right guy for the job,'” he said. “And lo and behold, I started Twisted Metal, walked back into the room, looked at my wife and said, ‘Well, I’m now starring in a TV series, so I think everything’s okay.’ She said, ‘I told you it would all work out.'”
Joe has told a version of this before, on MVP’s Marking Out podcast in August 2025, where he identified the friend as Sony executive Carter Swan and said the call came a couple of hours after the firing. Sunday’s telling adds his wife’s reaction and puts the gap at four hours.
Joe plays Sweet Tooth in Twisted Metal, with Will Arnett voicing the character. The series premiered on Peacock in July 2023, and a second season aired in 2025. Joe debuted in AEW in March 2022, held the ROH World Television Championship for a record 575 days before vacating it in November 2023, and won the AEW World Championship at Worlds End the following month.
The conversation was part of a service on giving. Joe said he grew up in a Samoan household where faith was “very present, omnipresent in all things every day,” and that he sat through the church’s messages on tithing for years as “an ultimate skeptic,” in part because his parents had been “led astray a bit” by prosperity doctrine. He said his wife, who had always tithed, asked him to try it.
“Much to me not agreeing to want to do it at all. But, lo and behold, happy wife, happy life. I acquiesced, and it was probably one of the greatest decisions that we made as a couple,” he said.
Joe also spoke about how he got into wrestling, through a jiu-jitsu school in Southern California whose owner was trying to fill a pro wrestling class. “He said, ‘You want to get a better workout?’ I said, sure. He said, ‘Try the pro wrestling class.’ He was really just trying to sell the pro wrestling class because he was severely losing out on money and needed to get that class going. So I tried it, I took to it, and here I am today still doing it.”
He said his two sons came up through the church’s youth programs and are students at Steinbrenner High School in Lutz.
The full conversation, from the church’s “A Principle Driven Life” service, is below. The firing story starts at the 18:11 mark.
