WWE Raw Results: Samoa Joe Smashes Seth Rollins After Ducking ‘Royal Rumble’ 2017
The WWE’s flagship show, Monday Night Raw, has sparked into life as NXT star Samoa Joe makes his main roster debut. Over the past couple of months, the WWE network have been lambasted for storylines that have lacked imagination. Commentators have criticized Monday Night Raw for serving up a diet of banality in recent weeks, but last night the WWE network struck back when Samoa Joe made his main roster debut. Samoa Joe announced his arrival by attacking and smashing Seth Rollins, who was engaged in a war of words with Triple H.
It was widely expected that Samoa Joe would be one of the surprise entrants on Sunday’s WWE PPV event, the 2017 Royal Rumble. Some of the WWE universe, and many wrestling writers, had even thought that Samoa Joe might announce himself by winning the Royal Rumble, but that didn’t happen. In fact, Samoa Joe played no part in the Royal Rumble event at all. As reported in the Inquisitr yesterday, the Royal Rumble was won by Randy Orton, who eliminated Roman Reigns to claim his second Royal Rumble win.
Many WWE wrestling fans were disappointed at the outcome of the 2017 Royal Rumble, saying that there were too many “low-card” entries. The WWE universe were left wondering why the WWE network had not used the showcase event to introduce some new blood. Samoa Joe and Shinsuke Nakamura are the NXT stars who are most likely to step up to the WWE’s main roster so it was surprising that neither was included in the Royal Rumble.
That said, it didn’t take long for the WWE network to introduce Samoa Joe to the wider WWE universe. To be precise, it took just 24 hours.
Samoa Joe Makes WWE Main Roster Debut On ‘Monday Night Raw’
Last night’s Monday Night Raw gave us an insight into a developing storyline. There has been bad blood between Triple H and his former protégé, Seth Rollins, for some time, and last night’s Raw gave us a glimpse as to how that is going to develop. The official WWE website tells us that Triple H used Samoa Joe to make a very forceful point to Rollins.
“The 14-time World Champion provided long-awaited answers as to why he betrayed Rollins.
“Triple H said he felt The Architect was a ‘failure’ without his support, and declared Rollins’ insolence had finally convinced him to shed his job as a corporate ‘creator’ and instead summon the ‘destroyer’ as Rollins requested.”
Of course, just as everyone expected Triple H to challenge Rollins to a showdown in the ring, the WWE network threw a curveball. As Triple H was verbally trashing Rollins, the man appeared to confront his former mentor. As Comic Book reports, it appeared that Rollins was about to get his hands on Triple H, but Samoa Joe made a huge entrance and scuppered that plan.
Rollins was making his way to the ring when he was surprised by Samoa Joe. The NXT star appeared out of the crowd without fanfare. There was no playing of Samoa Joe’s theme tune, no announcements, just 280 lbs. of muscle smashing into Rollins. The crowd, which had been strangely subdued during the evening’s events, finally exploded with excitement. Samoa Joe simply smashed Rollins, he was still beating on the smaller man long after Triple H had left the ring and the shows credits started to roll.
So, at last, the WWE network has introduced Samoa Joe to the wider WWE audience. We can probably expect the WWE to announce Samoa Joe’s step up to the Monday Night Raw roster, and we can expect the first order of business to be a feud between Rollins and Samoa Joe.
In other Monday Night Raw news, Brock Lesnar challenged Goldberg to a match at WrestleMania 33 and Braun Strowman defeated Kevin Owens by disqualification. Sami Zayn defeated U.S. Champion Chris Jericho.
[Featured Image by WWE Network]
