Tuesdays at TNA: Samoa Joe's Last Stand?

Often, a wrestler’s career will experience ebbs and flows whether from curtain-jerking PPVs, to becoming a promotion’s World Champion.

As fans, we go along for the ride when one of our favorite wrestlers makes it from the independent promotion to headlining main events on the national stage, agonizing over defeats and celebrating their victories.

That said, it looks as if the recent events on TNA’s Impact might be another twist in the career of our favorite Samoan Submission Machine, Samoa Joe.

When we last saw Samoa Joe, he was being “kidnapped” (I use that term loosely) by a group of black-clad people, and taken away in a van.

Immediately, one of two things came to mind: Is this TNA’s way of stating they no longer believe Joe can be the big event star he once was thought to be, or could it be their way of reinventing him to become the dominating presence he was during his days of TNA infancy?

Back in February, Joe cashed in his World title opportunity to go up against “The Phenomenal” AJ Styles, who is undergoing his own character development under the tutelage of the “Nature Boy” Ric Flair.

Joe and Styles wrestled in what was a pretty average match by their lofty standards—a world title match that didn’t even headline the “Against All Odds” PPV. Joe lost due to shenanigans, and on the next episode of Impact we saw him getting scolded by Eric Bischoff before promptly losing to Orlando Jordan of all people.

Once that was done I went back to look at some of Samoa Joe’s older matches from when TNA first made it onto Spike TV.

He was the no-nonsense, no-speaking, dominating force that had fans yelling, “Joe’s gonna kill you,” and made his opponents believe it as they struggled to get out of his Kokina clutch hold.

His triple threat match with Christopher Daniels and Styles at Unbreakable 2005 put the X-Division on the map. Everyone on the Internet was counting down the days until he would eventually hoist the TNA World Championship. 

However, that wasn’t the case as Joe went through a very nonsensical feud with Kurt Angle, resulting in one of the worst matches in TNA history at Hard Justice in 2007. It wasn’t until Lockdown in 2008 when Joe finally defeated Angle to win the World Championship.

By that time many people had soured on TNA for waiting too long to put the strap on Joe. Joe was paired with Kevin Nash and his World Title run was largely forgettable as they turned Joe from a devastating force to a paranoid guy who wasn't able to trust his own talents.

Once the Main Event Mafia angle came to light and Samoa Joe was one of the leaders of the TNA’s Frontline, I thought, “Great. This will be the opportunity for him to reinvent himself.” I couldn’t have been more wrong as they not only ruined that angle, but worse, made Samoa Joe a member of the MEM for the money! I won’t even get into the ridiculous “Nation of Violence” gimmick when he went around in Mike Tyson-like face paint and carried a machete. 

That all said and with the recent developments on Impact, will this be the last time we see the “Samoan Submission Machine” as a potential World Championship contender?

It is rumored that the Hulk Hogan-Bischoff regime is high on Samoa Joe, and are setting him up to be in the mix with TNA's long-term future.

I do believe that he can still gain the momentum he once had a few years ago, and here is how they should do it:

It’s obvious that TNA is looking to set up their Global Championship as their secondary “worker’s title,” and he would be the ideal candidate to bring prominence to it.

Have him come back to convincingly defeat Rob Terry, and then he could have a litany of challengers who may not be quite ready to become a World Champion just yet.

Since Styles will have his own battles with D’Angelo Dinero, Abyss, and eventually Kurt Angle, TNA can take advantage of this opportunity to make the Global title, and give Samoa Joe a major step forward.