Samoa Joe retained the ROH World Television Championship against Keith Lee on the November 8th episode of AEW Dynamite. Joe vacated the title after the bout and said that he was coming for MJF’s AEW World Title. Joe held the ROH TV Championship for 574 days.
At Full Gear, Samoa Joe became MJF’s tag team partner to defeat The Gunns for the ROH World Tag Team Titles. Last week, the duo was supposed to have a tag team match against two masked men. However, MJF was attacked backstage before the match began.
During the ROH Final Battle media call, AEW President Tony Khan was asked about Samoa Joe relinquishing the ROH World Television Title. Khan said that the ROH TV Champion should consistently defend the title on ROH television. Khan added that he and other officials decided that vacating the title was the best option, as there are many commercial benefits to having Samoa Joe on AEW television.
“The World TV Title has been such a consistent focus on the TV show, and Samoa Joe has defended it many times. Given the nature of a TV Title, I think it will be good to have a champion [who] can participate consistently on ROH TV and be a fighting champion…
I also think now, with AEW, Samoa Joe’s become a huge focus of the AEW promotional considerations. Definitely for Samoa Joe, I do think it made a lot of sense for him to be a focus because he’s such a huge star for AEW. There [are] a lot of commercial benefits to having a huge star of Samoa Joe’s stature on AEW television every week. I felt like as big as Samoa Joe’s presence on AEW has become, it’d become challenging for him to defend the championship. So, relinquishing it at that point I think did make some sense.”