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Summerslam is hours away as I write this and the arm of the victor of the main event four way for the WWE Universal champion has yet to be raised, but there is already a winner: Samoa Joe.
There were a lot of things said about Samoa Joe over the course of his career by detractors. He was talented but didn't have the WWE look. He would never get over to the masses. He doesn't have the WWE physique. He's not as good as people think he is. He's not the type of wrestler WWE would promote. He's fat. He's just a ROH guy. He's just a TNA guy.
The critics of course, were clueless. For the run of his entire career, Samoa Joe has been the guy that has walked into a company with something to prove and then changed that company for the better.
In 2002, Joe was brought into Ring of Honor for a one time match against Low Ki in Philadelphia. He was not known to the vast majority of the fans in the 400 seat sweatbox known as the Murphy Rec Center. He and Ki beat the living hell out of each other, creating an instant classic and securing Samoa Joe a job for life if he wanted it with ROH.
Within a year, Joe was the ROH champion and carried that belt with all the luster and prestige of an old school bad-ass champion. He was smart, he was composed yet he was a monster. He was everything ROH needed, especially when a series of stupid decisions led to the near-decimation of the promotion during Feinstein-gate. With all the focus on the idea that the company was doomed, Joe and CM Punk grabbed everyone's attention and forced it back to what was taking place inside the ring by putting on a match for the ages via a 60 minute draw in Dayton, Ohio.
"I've obviously seen a lot of good wrestling and bad wrestling over my 50-plus years in professional wrestling," said renowned trainer and wrestler Les Thatcher. "That was great wrestling. They told a story, they took the crowd for a ride and I was so impressed that they were able to keep everyone captivated. It was a moment where you knew something special transpired."
Never mind that it was a good match. In the annals of Ring of Honor history, it was the match and eventually the feud that saved the promotion from death.
ROH's survival is a notch on Samoa Joe's belt and always will be.
Then it was onto TNA, where Joe was brought into the X-Division despite the criticism of some within the company that he wouldn't get over and wouldn't work. From the second he debuted and began a long-running undefeated streak by choking out Sonjay Dutt, Joe began to string together a series of amazing matches and feuds with everyone from Scott Steiner to Kurt Angle and helped create the true legend of the X-Division, one so strong that it struggles today to escape the shadow of the perfect moment where Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels and AJ Styles headlined a TNA PPV and had what, to date, is still the best match in the history of the promotion.
That perfect moment is a notch on Samoa Joe's belt and always will be.
In many ways, Joe was the heart and soul of TNA for many years, the one person who let his emotions run loose at times because it was always going to be "as far" as he went. That's what the critics said, anyway. Whether it was publicly crapping on the company during a PPV for continuing to book older names and not giving the younger guys the ball they deserved when Scott Hall no-showed a main event or storming the production truck to scream at Vince Russo over something that Joe felt hurt himself and the company during a taping, Joe always strove to make TNA as legit as he could, in whatever role he had.
The reality is that Joe was there too long and the stupidity of what happened in TNA looked to have worn him down towards the latter end of his career. The spark that made his matches so special was no longer there. Whether it was frustration or complacency, only Samoa Joe could tell you, but the mess that was TNA had cascaded over to Joe's work and he was just good, where before he was great.
It was typical TNA stupidity, however, that led to Joe's departure and the reignition of the spark that is Joe's career.
"We were touring the UK and there was a TV taping, " said one former TNA performer speaking under the condition of anonymity. "I don't want to bury the guy but a locker room politician was fighting over a finish and a segment. Management all looked at each other and didn't do a damn thing, then looked to Joe, the veteran to sort it out. Joe did. The segment went fine, but I was standing in gorilla when Joe returned from the ring. He walked through the curtain and one of the writers was off talking to some girl backstage, Big was looking on his phone. No one said thank you, no one said good job, no one said sh** to the guy who just saved their segment and averted all their headaches. Joe looked like his face was going to explode for a second, composed himself and walked away. I knew right then he was done with the company."
Indeed, within a month, Joe was gone, requesting and receiving his release.
That error will remain a notch in the belt of stupidity for TNA, for a lot of reasons.
Joe soon walked into WWE NXT with the idea that he would be a veteran that could work with the younger talents and help prepare them for the next level that was the WWE main roster. He surprisingly walked in retaining his long-time ring name, breaking with what at that point had been WWE tradition and policy. Another notch on his belt, immediately changing the culture of WWE developmental.
Joe's promos were always excellent but at that point, they were the shining star in his work. They were what he was best known for at that moment. However, the Joe that walked into NXT was not the Joe that exited TNA. It was the Samoa Joe that saved ROH that signed with World Wrestling Entertainment instead. His ring work immediately returned to form and whatever weight he had put on during the run in TNA was soon gone.
The Samoa Joe that kicking the living crap out of Low Ki and had classics with CM Punk and Kurt Angle and AJ Styles was now doing just that for NXT, facing the likes of Shinsuke Nakamura and Finn Balor.
Only, Joe wasn't just getting the next generation ready. He was rising from the ashes.
Soon, like a Phoenix, Joe rose from NXT and landed on the Raw roster as Triple H's hand-picked assassin, attacking Seth Rollins. From there, he was having great matches and bad-ass confrontations with Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar. He was cutting the same type of promos that made you believe. He was having the matches that blew people away. He was back, at 38 years old, having the type of matches that he had at 25. He literally ripped the necks off every critic and sh** down their throat.
Tonight, Samoa Joe main events Summerslam. It doesn't matter if he wins the match. He won the war already. The belt is once again notched.
"I am Samoa Joe. I am pro wrestling." - Joe, ROH promo, 2003.
Damn right.
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