In December, Samoa Joe and Magnus were paired together in TNA’s Wild Card Tournament with seemingly no direction for either team.
Two months later, Joe and Magnus have caught fire, becoming one of wrestling’s hottest rising tag teams due to their uncanny synergy inside the ring.
Now the duo once again has the chance to capture championship gold Sunday when they team to challenge Matt Morgan and Crimson for the TNA World Tag Team Championships at Against All Odds.
“I think the major driving success with the success we’ve been having is that when I got in there with Magnus, he wanted to win,” Joe said Wednesday during a TNA conference call. “He wanted to put on a great show, he wanted it to work. I hear cohesion a lot when people describe us now and really, we worked on very little as far as trying to coordinate as a team. Things kind of came together the right way. I’ve always been an admirer of his work, I always thought he’s been a lot better than people give him credit for. Magnus can wrestle, he can go.”
Joe and Magnus have caught the eyes of wrestling fans around the world with their teamwork, especially what has developed into their finishing maneuver: A Joe kick to head in the corner, followed by a snap mare and completed with a silky smooth elbow from the middle rope from Magnus.
Although they came up short in their title effort last month at Genesis, the duo have stayed in the faces of the champs and earned another chance to compete for the titles.
For Joe, teaming with the 25-year-old Magnus has helped motivate him to reach greater heights in 2012 after a down 2011. He said Magnus’ hunger has rubbed off on him a bit, while jokingly adding he doesn’t want to give Magnus too much credit. That, Joe says, has helped make them a great team.
“It’s his hunger to show the world what he’s capable of and me needing to remind the world of what I’m capable of and who I am,” Joe said. “You put those two things together and those are grand motivating factors and that’s why we’ve been so successful.”
Joe said one of the bigger factors that works between them is, “there’s just this weird, innate, natural timing between the two of us.”
“There’s definitely a natural timing between Magnus and myself as far as what we do in the ring,” Joe said. “It’s natural in the fact that it’s not practiced. Magnus lives a few states away from me and I’m almost never at home, so to get time to actually work with my partner and work out the kinks, we haven’t had that much time. We meet for a little bit beforehand and discuss things we’d like to accomplish, but it’s a testament to his ability that he’s able to get in the ring and read off of me what we’re doing and just go from there.”
For Joe, capturing the tag team titles Sunday is just one step toward a successful 2012. The former TNA World Heavyweight Champion has high hopes for what could come this year.
“If anybody knows me as a wrestler, they know I run in streaks,” Joe said. “Once I get hot, I don’t get un-hot. I just keep going until either I explode or I get suspended or fined. That’s the way I run. It takes a lot to get me out of the picture.”
RELATED LINK
