Tony Khan discusses Samoa Joe vacating the Ring of Honor World Television Championship without properly losing the championship.
Normally, championships in wrestling are vacated only when a competitor is unable to defend their title. However, Samoa Joe recently vacated the Ring of Honor TV Title in an effort to fully focus on capturing the AEW World Title from Maxwell Jacob Friedman.
Speaking on the media call that occurred prior to ROH Final Battle 2023, Khan explained to Bill Pritchard of WrestleZone why it made sense to him for Samoa Joe to relinquish the championship
"The 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, it will be good to have a champion who will participate consistently on ROH TV and be a fighting champion," said Tony. "Samoa Joe has been such an incredible champion, was the longest-reigning champion of all time, and made such an incredible list of defenses. If you look back at all the great wrestlers Samoa Joe fought for the ROH TV Title in the over one-year reign, it was incredible. I also think now, with AEW, Samoa Joe has become a huge focus of AEW promotional consideration, and 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 have a huge star of Samoa Joe’s stature on AEW television every week. It felt like as big as Samoa Joe’s presence on AEW has become, it had become challenging for him to defend the championship. Relinquishing it, at that point, did make some sense. To him, personally, it made sense, because he had accomplished everything he had set out to. He became the longest-reigning, most dominant champion and set his sights on a new goal, which is for AEW Worlds End."
The Ring of Honor World TV Title will be at stake in a Survival of the Fittest match at ROH Final Battle.
Fans can check out the full card for Ring of Honor Final Battle here. Fightful will have full coverage of the event on December 15.
Elsewhere on the call, Khan discussed potentially vacating the Ring of Honor Tag Team Championship. Read his comments here.
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