I do need to preface this by saying that I am over the moon that Samoa Joe is back in AEW. He’s one of the greatest of all time and should be treated as such, and when he was taken off of TV earlier this year after suffering a concussion, it was a real shame considering he was firmly established in the main event scene once again.
On this week’s episode of “AEW Dynamite,” Joe returned at the last minute to face Cody Chhun in what was, in short, a squash match. There’s no problem with that. Joe did his walkaway spot, he hit the Muscle Buster, the fans were super happy to see him back, it served its purpose, and that’s completely fine. However, there has been a common theme running through AEW this year, particularly in the main event scene, where everyone wants their shot at the AEW World Championship, a title Joe held less than four months ago. You would think that after his win, he’d get on the microphone and do what Tommaso Ciampa, Kevin Knight, and Brody King have done in the past seven days: call out the AEW World Champion.
Did that happen? No, it didn’t. What happened instead? Joe walked up the ramp and reunited with Hook, who, as the interim leader of The Opps, had tried to recruit Anthony Bowens, and that’s about it. Will that story go somewhere? Probably, but Joe was one of the many people gunning for the richest prize in AEW at the turn of the new year, so you would think that he would want to get that back almost immediately. But nothing was said by the man himself. There were a few mentions in the commentary, but you need to hear it from Joe that he wants what is rightfully his back around his waist, especially now, since it’s around the waist of Darby Allin who Joe has a long history.
Joe would be a perfect opponent for Darby as well, given their late 2022/early 2023 series fighting over the AEW TNT Championship. Darby has already said he wants to defend it as much as possible, so there is an easy way to get Joe back into title contention. However, it seems like we’re going to have to see Joe clean up whatever mess Hook made with The Opps before anything goes further, and no disrespect to Bowens, but Joe doesn’t have time to waste on recruiting new members to his group.
He’s only been back for a week. I just hope that Joe keeps his eye on the prize, rather than what Hook has been doing since he’s been gone.
Written by Sam Palmer.
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