Samoa Joe ready to be AEW's ‘standard bearer' and save the world title at Beach Break

Samoa Joe is looking to succeed where others have failed.
He will be the next up to try to end Jon Moxley's 210-plus day reign as AEW World champion when the two veterans step into a steel cage together for the first time at Dynamite: Beach Break on Wednesday (8 p.m., TBS, Max). Joe and his Opps faction have already taken the Trios titles from Moxley and his Death Riders. Now, he will look to become a two-time AEW world champion.
Before the big match, Joe took time for some Q&A with The Post's Joseph Staszewski.
Advertisement
(Edited for clarity and length)

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Yahoo

a day ago

• Yahoo

Top contenders to watch in the $1M Fanatics Games

Fanatics is hosting its first-ever Fanatics Games at the 2025 Fanatics Fest, and the odds aren't exactly in favor of the collectors. While it would be a storybook moment to see a fan take down some of the greatest athletes of all time, collecting cardboard takes a very different mental and physical toll than playing professional sports — not to mention a different diet. The top prize is a staggering $1 million, with second place receiving a 2025 Ferrari 296 GTB, and third place walking away with a LeBron James rookie gold refractor card valued at approximately $250,000. Before we get into who might win this thing, let's talk about who has absolutely no shot. This isn't a knock on the fans and collectors competing — it's a nod to the level of greatness involved in the event. There is a zero percent chance a collector or fan finishes anywhere near the podium. Call it a bold take if you want, but when the competitions include a three-point contest, QB accuracy challenge, and even a WWE-style entrance — and you're going up against the GOATs of their respective sports — the average Joe doesn't stand a chance. Advertisement As for the celebrity pool? Let's be real — Druski, Kai Cenat, Gillie, Kevin Costner (legend, but he's 70), Sketch, and DJ Khaled aren't sniffing the top three either. Now let's get to the sleepers — the under-the-radar names who could actually take this thing home. Yes, beat some of the greatest athletes of all time. First up: IShowSpeed Laugh all you want, but the kid is pure chaos in the best way. He's got the energy, the athleticism, and the unpredictability to shock the field. My top categories for him? Soccer and WWE entrance — he's built for spectacle, and this stage might be where he explodes. Advertisement Second: Julian Edelman He's not the biggest name in the lineup, but he might be the grittiest. A multi-sport athlete who thrives on pressure and wins off straight hustle. Don't let the retired dad look fool you — the man has rings for a reason. Never underestimate the heart of a champion. And third: CJ Stroud Now, some would argue he shouldn't even be on a sleeper list — he could flat-out win this thing. He's dangerous in anything involving a ball. But while his football and basketball skills are top-tier, I worry about how he'll stack up in the more offbeat events. Still, CJ is a competitor through and through. He won't go down easy. Advertisement Now, here are the top five — based on purely theoretical odds. No sportsbooks, no analytics, just vibes, gut instinct, and a lot of common sense. At -20,000: LeBron James. The only thing stopping LeBron from winning this is if he decides not to try. Yes, he's 40 now — but he's still the greatest athlete of all time. The real question isn't if he'll win, it's how the Fanatics Games will impact his legacy. Some are already saying a win here gives him an edge over Jordan. If he pulls this off, it's another accolade to add to the GOAT debate — and one MJ will never have. At -15,000: Tom Brady Some might say these odds are too generous. Brady's a multi-sport monster — football, basketball, golf, even baseball — and he might just be the most competitive person in the entire event. And that's saying something. The man doesn't show up to participate, he shows up to win. It wouldn't shock me one bit if he walks away from this with $1 million and yet another trophy to stuff in that already overcrowded case. Advertisement At -100: Travis Hunter A steep drop from the top two, but make no mistake — Travis Hunter is built for this. Arguably the most athletic person in the entire competition, he already dominates on both sides of the football field. If there's any event that requires raw explosiveness or versatility, he's a serious threat. Honestly, if the Fanatics Games included bass fishing, his odds might be even better. Sleeper pick? Maybe. But don't be shocked if he finishes on top. At +250: Peyton Manning This one might raise some eyebrows — but don't sleep on the Sheriff. The Manning family tree is loaded with athleticism, and Peyton's skills go well beyond the gridiron. If he locks in on golf and football — which he absolutely should — he could be the surprise of the tournament. He may not be the youngest in the field, but don't be shocked if he schools the competition and leaves with more than just laughs. We might just witness an old man's masterclass. At +300: Joe Burrow Joey B might just be the best value pick in this entire theoretical odds game. Cool, calm, and unbothered by pressure — the man does everything with a quiet confidence and a little extra swagger. Don't be surprised if he casually drops top scores while looking like he barely broke a sweat. He's got the skills, the poise, and most importantly, the people behind him. The crowd will certainly be rooting for Joey Brrr. Your collection deserves a community. Download Mantel today.

Yahoo

a day ago

• Yahoo

Rapper Fat Joe Slammed For Sex And Falling In Love With A Minor

The ghosts of Fat Joe's alleged messy past are coming back to haunt him through a familiar channel! A former staff member of the rapper has accused him of engaging in illicit activity with teenage girls while they worked together. Fat Joe's camp has vehemently denied the allegations and accuses his former staff of being vindictive in this regard, simply because the rapper had previously sued them. The rapper's former hype man, Terrance T.A. Dixon, filed a lawsuit on Thursday stating that there were at least two underage females with whom Joe had sexual relations, and another with whom he allegedly fell in love. In the documents, Dixon's lawyer, Tyrone A. Blackburn, noted that a 16-year-old girl of Dominican descent once offered to perform oral and other sexual acts on Joe in exchange for money, clothes, and cell phone bill payments. Dixon even alleges that Joe entered into a sexual affair with a 15-year-old Caucasian girl after meeting with her at a concert abroad. According to him, Joe had regularly flown her to New York and Miami and paid for a BBL because her body was not fully developed. Dixon added that the girl in question is now married to a professional athlete. In the lawsuit, Dixon alleges that Fat Joe also fell in love with a Latina, and a sexual relationship started between them at just 15 years old. Joe reportedly sorted out all her financial commitments and had taken her abroad while he was performing on tours. He even got her into a condo close to where he and his wife lived in Florida and had reportedly considered leaving his wife to move in with her. According to Dixon, Joe has a sticky predilection for underage females, as he had sung about in his track "She Loves My Mama." The former hype man continued that Joe also involved him in his shenanigans by forcing him to have sex with women after his concerts. At the time, these acts happened in front of other people. As reported by TMZ, Dixon added that Joe underpaid him as a music collaborator, did not give him songwriting rights, and hid royalties and backend settlements. Reacting to the damning accusations leveled against the rapper by his ex-employee, his lawyer, Joe Tacopina, clarified that the claims were false. In his words, Dixon was merely trying to get his pound of flesh, and his lawsuit was a reactionary move to Joe's lawsuit against him. Describing it as "lies intended to damage his reputation and force a settlement through public pressure," Tacopina added that the police were fully aware of his extortionate demands from the rapper. In April, Joe headed to court to name-drop Dixon in a defamation lawsuit after he first came out with his pedophilia allegations against Joe publicly. Joe's lawsuit explained that Dixon got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity when he began walking for the rapper in 2006. Their partnership reportedly ended amicably in 2019, until six years later, when Dixon began making slanderous accusations against Joe. This is not Joe's first rodeo with lawsuits and Lego processes. In 2013, the rapper was sentenced to four months in prison by U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman for failing to file tax returns with the IRS, resulting in tax debts. As seen on the DOJ New Jersey's site, Joe, whose real name is Joseph Cartagena, had already pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Cathy L. Waldor to Counts One and Two of a four-count information, for failing to file tax returns for the 2007-2010 tax years. The two counts relate to tax years 2007 and 2008. In terms of the plea agreement, however, all four years, including 2009 and 2010, were combined as a loss on tax during sentencing. In his 2013 case, according to the documents brought to court, there are statements that: Joe received payment for musical performances and got royalties on the sales of his music. Such monies were obtained in three ways from Terror Squad Production Inc. (Terror Squad), Miramar Music Touring Inc. (Miramar), and FJTS Corp. Cartagena acknowledged that his gross income in 2007 exceeded $1.18 million, in 2008 exceeded $1.28 million, in 2009 exceeded $265,000, and in 2010 exceeded $630,000. The sum of the tax loss calculated by the government then amounted to $718,038. Judge Waldor, alongside Joe's four-month sentence, ordered him to stay on supervised release for one year and pay a fine of $ 15,000. He was expected to check in by August 26, 2013, and begin serving his term in jail. In 2023, the rapper made a drastic move by shedding a massive 200 pounds. While he had a brief stint of depression, Joe believes his decision to adopt a healthy lifestyle changed his life for good. The process also ushered him into a new era of discovering himself, especially as he had to deal with the crushing blow of his best friend's death. He felt an epiphany when he attended his bestie, Big Pun's, funeral. The rapper said: "I went to his funeral, and I felt like Ebenezer Scrooge. Like, I seen me, and I'm looking at his little daughter. She was the same age as my daughter. I said, 'You gotta lose weight; otherwise, you outta here.'" Before the wheels of stardom chose him, the New York native experienced a gloomy childhood with various episodes of bullying and betrayal. In a 2022 report, The Blast shared that the rapper recalled being bullied every day as a junior high student. The experience changed him forever, transforming him into a different person. Since the age of 2, the rapper noted that he was tagged "Fat Joey," and it stuck. "You know, I'm not gonna lie, it's scary looking out the classroom window knowing that there are 20 guys waiting to beat my ass," Joe noted, adding that they never fought fair, as they would always jump him. Joe added that his best friend was also forced to join them at some point, and after a while, he left him to his fate. What fate awaits Fat Joe in court with these allegations?

Vox

3 days ago

• Vox

Why are so many straight guys so bad at gossiping?

is a senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses over, from Marvel and movies to fitness and skin care. He came to Vox in 2014. Prior to that, he worked at The Atlantic. What does it mean to be 'good' at gossip? A good gossip doesn't just tell you that Sally broke up with Joe, they tell you that Sally broke up with Joe just a week after posting a bunch of (now deleted) romantic international vacation pics to Instagram. They don't simply say 'Brittany's a bad coworker,' they tell you that no one at the office likes Britt because she microwaves her asparagus-heavy meal preps. They don't mention that Mary is having a tough time with her sister-in-law and then drop it, they explain that her brother's wife is a Disney adult who arranged for the entire family to spend their next Thanksgiving at Epcot and already sent out Venmo requests for a couple thousand dollars worth of Mickey Mouse breakfasts. According to stereotype, this is a skill men — particularly straight men — just don't have. Vox Culture Culture reflects society. Get our best explainers on everything from money to entertainment to what everyone is talking about online. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Their supposed inability to spin a good yarn has been a point of internet mockery, with memes and gags usually coming from the women in their lives who are forced to parse through the driest, most unsatisfying stories ever told. Like a hungry person fighting their way through a well-done steak, these tea-seekers must suffer to find a semblance of sustenance. It's hard not to laugh at the tension these skits and jokes highlight between the person wanting the entire story and the person giving them absolutely nothing. But underneath the comedy are deeper questions about the ethics, the stigma, and the history of gossip, especially who gets to participate. The way that the women who poke fun at their partner's reticence online seek (and are denied) connection speaks to larger concerns. What does dude's inability to share secrets — especially with other bros — mean for the much-discussed 'loneliness crisis' among men? Let's be clear: Men gossip! When people say that men are bad at gossiping, it might come with the assumption that men don't gossip. They can't be good at it, because they don't or only rarely partake. But that train of thought is built on a fallacy. That fallacy begins with how we define gossip. For a long time, it's had a negative connotation, the act of talking poorly about someone behind their back. But more and more recently, researchers and social scientists like Megan Robbins have begun reassessing the term, broadening it to define all the ways we talk about other people, good, bad, and neutral. Related The surprising truth about loneliness in America Robbins and her team conducted a 2019 study that examined the rates at which men and women gossip and if men and women had any differences when it comes to positive (e.g., 'John bought a pair of nice shoes!'), negative ('John bought a pair of ugly shoes!') and neutral ('John bought a pair of shoes.'). They found that men and women gossip positively and negatively at similar rates, but that women gossip neutrally more than men. 'It really corresponds with past evidence that women talk more about social topics than men,' Robbins, an associate professor in psychology at the University of California Riverside, says. 'So there's this practice element to talking about social topics, talking about people, even just in a neutral way, and men are just not doing it as much in the evidence that we have.' Robbins's study helps explain a few things. It debunks the trope that women are more inclined to disparage someone, and, at the same time, explains why people may perceive that women are better at gossiping or sharing information — if they're gossiping neutrally at a higher rate, so they have more practice. The project also shows that despite the stereotypes, men do gossip, positively and negatively. Getty Images/iStockphoto More than that, men enjoy gossip, even (and especially) when they're at the center of it. A 2025 study from professor Andrew Hales and his research team found that men, more than women, 'were consistently more open' to being talked about. 'I mean it, maybe it's as simple as men just like attention,' Hales, who teaches at the University of Mississippi, tells me. Hales's study focused on the targets of gossip, setting up a theoretical scenario in which a person leaves a party and then is asked whether they want the people who stayed to talk about them. Hales and his team found that people who were male and/or narcissistic were the most likely to want to be spoken about, even if the gossip was going to be negative. 'If you were to control for narcissism, men still are more comfortable being talked about than women are — so it's not just that men are more narcissistic, although they are,' Hales says, noting that the findings contradicted the popular ideas about how men don't enjoy gossip nor particularly like being the targets of it. The population who have been thought to like gossip the least, actually enjoy its existence as much, if not more, than everyone else. But if that's the case, why are they notoriously awful at it? Why are men bad at gossiping Comedian and podcaster Jared Freid intuitively believes what Robbins's study proves: that uninspired male gossips just haven't put in the work, like weight lifters who regularly skip leg day. 'I just don't think there's as many reps for men hearing a crazy story, and there's a lot more reps for women,' Freid, a man, tells me. 'We're just not trained, you know?' Freid primarily attributes men's unskillful gossip to a lack of cultural opportunities to yap freely. He sees things like weekend brunches, group chats, and the ample discussion fodder provided by Bravo's various reality shows as opportunities that mostly women have to sharpen their storytelling tools and observe how drama works firsthand. These conversations teach a person how to gab and, perhaps more importantly, how to respond to spicy information. Gossip is a two-way street; a question or quip can enrich the entire tale. Straight men, he says, don't have an equivalent. While men do hang out, it never gets too chatty. Freid explains that gossip feels 'messy' and, even something as simple as being curious about a story or a rumor could be construed as stirring the pot (men, he says, do not want to be seen as pot-stirrers). It's not that straight men are inherently bad at gossip, it's that they won't allow themselves to openly partake in or enjoy it. 'I don't think guys are really allowed to be messy and still have social credibility,' Freid says. Kelsey McKinney, the author of You Didn't Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip and the founding host of the Normal Gossip podcast, sees this fear from men, too. 'Straight men seem to have the perception that gossip isn't talking about other people,' McKinney says. 'Gossip, to them, is a tone of voice that they avoid at all costs.' Gossip Girl (starring Blake Lively and Leighton Meester) was a TV show about popular teens terrorized by a secret, anonymous online gossip (who turned out to be a guy named Dan Humphries). The CW This attitude grows out from a misogynistic idea that gossip is a negative thing that women do, something Robbins, the social scientist, considered during her research. 'There's a stereotype that women [negatively] gossip more than men, but there hasn't been a whole lot of evidence for that,' Robbins tells Vox. 'And I feel like having the stereotype that women gossip more than men, you know, serves to keep them in their place, right?' Robbins believes that social skills are valuable, and being able to discuss social topics is a necessary piece of that puzzle. Yet historically, those abilities haven't always been prized. Dismissing all social talk as gossip was a way to dismiss the women who possess those talents. Now, so many men see gossip as unbecoming as well as unmanly, they don't allow themselves to really relish the juicy morsels, nor do they tease out the savory bits. Curiously, Freid is the co-host of the Betches media-produced podcast U Up? It's a show devoted to decoding dating and relationships. His professional life revolves around piquing people's interests and recounting people's stories in hilarious ways. Does that mean the careers Freid's chosen are at odds with his manhood? 'I had to learn to be a better storyteller,' Freid tells me. To do that? He talked to women; friends, his co-host, his coworkers at Betches. A lot of women. Could gossip cure the male loneliness epidemic? Okay, so men might be less adept at gossip. Do they really need to be good at it? As Robbins indicated, continuing research shows that gossip can be a helpful social tool. Talking about other people isn't just 'not all bad,' it can be actively good. McKinney says that social scientists and psychologists have been reassessing the tropes, narratives, and stigma surrounding gossip and gossipers, and they've found that gossip brings people closer together. The idea is that the individual piece of gossip is less important than the bond that's forged when someone shares information with another person. Maybe the true measure of a friendship is the 'Can I be a bitch for a second?' texts we sent along the way. We share stories with people we think we are close to, and sharing things with other people creates intimacy. The gossip we share, arguably, is as much about our own values and beliefs and dislikes as it is about other people. At the same time, over the past half-decade or so, much has been made of what's known as the male loneliness epidemic — the idea that men are lonelier than ever and that their friendships are dwindling. If intimacy is defined, in part, by the idea of sharing stories with one another, it's not that difficult to see men who are bad at gossip hit with a lose-lose situation. They don't have the close friendships that facilitate gossip and the bond-building that comes with it, and they don't get good enough at gossip to initiate the bond-building. That's a problem, because men are disadvantaged when it comes to intimacy and communication from an early age. 'Research shows that by the time little boys are 3, we talk to them less and touch them less,' Alexandra Solomon, a relationship psychologist at Northwestern University, tells me. Solomon says that fewer conversations and less physical affection in childhood have long-lasting social effects. As boys grow up, many will tend to see communication as transactional, or directive, or a means to solving problems instead of an avenue that builds relationships. Those men see the sharing of gossip and storytelling in general as uncomfortable or a taboo, instead of intimately sharing and engaging with a story. 'I really think there's a male fear of incriminating yourself.' 'I really think there's a male fear of incriminating yourself,' Freid, the comedian and man, tells me. 'I don't hear someone telling me their story and go, Oh, good. I can tell them all my stories.' Freid says he sees male friendships and female friendships as fundamentally different, echoing Solomon's explanation of the divergent ideas about communication. Female friendships, he says, involves a give-and-go, a trading of shoulders to cry on. That 'trading' allows for deeper friendships among women — but, he suspects, also opens the door for potential rifts when someone doesn't hold up their end of the bargain. Fried takes some comfort in the idea that he never has to worry about hypothetically disappointing his buddies. 'I just have no friends where I'd be like, I can't believe they haven't called recently,' he says. It's not too hard, though, to link not expecting anyone to check in with a larger, existential problem with loneliness. Is that lack of expectation worth the lack of support? If Saturdays are proverbially for the boys, why not mix in some yapping? If straight men (statistically) gossip anyway, is there real harm in openly enjoying it, seeking it out, using it to build connections? As easy as that seems, it's asking men to share things about themselves in ways that go against how they've been conditioned. 'I would actually be out of a job if men could do that,' Solomon, the psychologist at Northwestern, tells me. 'If the trade-off is not having a career, but men talked and shared more? I would do it.'