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Why Finn Balor Should Be the Heel in Feud with Samoa Joe

By Carl Gac

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Looking at how Finn Balor and Samoa Joe will end up feuding for the NXT Championship.

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The latest NXT special, NXT TakeOver Respect, takes place tonight from Full Sail University in Florida. We will see NXT Champion Finn Balor teaming with Samoa Joe in the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic semifinal against Dash Wilder & Scott Dawson. Everyone is expecting some kind of friction between Balor and Joe to happen, which would see them feud over the Irishman’s NXT Championship. I’m also expecting that this will happen. The majority of the audience is expecting it to be Joe that turns on Balor but what if the roles are reversed?

What if it’s Balor that turns on Joe? What if it’s The Demon that takes out his partner and turns heel in the process, costing them the opportunity to win the tournament? What if this is the turn that pushes Balor to a whole new level?

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In NXT, Balor has been one of the biggest babyfaces the company has. From his amazingly creative entrances, to his ability in the ring, it’s hard not to like Balor. It’s hard not to cheer for him as well as thinking of him as a heel.

Finn Balor, the man formerly known as Prince Devitt, fits the role of heel pretty well. He spent a large part of his career in Japan as the leader of Bullet Club, the group who came together to take over New Japan and do everything they could to be the top stars in the country. While he was part of Bullet Club, Prince Devitt was the perfect cocky heel. He was the guy who told you how good he was and, infuriatingly, he could back it up.

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    • When Balor came to work for WWE in NXT, he was never going to come in the role of heel. From his first moments as the partner to Hideo Itami against The Ascension, Balor was one of the most popular men on the roster. The response from the crowd told you everything you needed to know about how they viewed him.

    In the last month or so, we’ve seen a slightly different side to Finn Balor. Most notably during his ring entrances, where he has begun to wear a leather jacket and show of his NXT Championship belt with regularity. The usual posing on the turnbuckles and giving the fans the chance to join him in that pose is still there, but this little tweak to his character could be a small pointer towards his future role as the company’s top heel.

    The introduction of the whole “Balor Club” bit could also be a pointer towards something more sinister for Balor. Many would see it as a way of benefitting from the popularity of the Bullet Club shirts that were released a while back, which has now become part of his entrance video. But what if that’s a not very well hidden way of predicting a stable, led by Balor, in the style of Bullet Club? You could throw a few other men from the NXT roster along with him and have a proper ass kicking group in the company. But who’s biggest aim is to stop Balor from losing the NXT Championship?

    If you want the crowd to get behind a feud between Balor and Joe, you need Balor to be the bad guy. Not the full on bad guy we see from Kevin Owens, but the cool, cocky bad guy like we saw from the early days of the likes of Shawn Michaels. Joe is more believable as the good guy who’s here to save the day in this feud, much like when he debuted in NXT at the end of the match between Owens and Sami Zayn.

    Having Balor switch roles is the perfect way to bring back another man who is intertwined with him, the aforementioned Hideo Itami. Since Itami was taken out earlier in the year the majority of fans thought it was Owens who had injured him. What if it was his friend Balor, though? What if it was the Balor-led Balor Club that took him out? What if his motivation was that he didn’t want to face Itami because he knew he couldn’t beat him? There isn’t a better way to bring back Hideo.

    NXT needs a direction for Balor to head in the lead up to NXT TakeOver London. A road that includes a war with Samoa Joe, on the way to a series of matches with the returning Itami, is the perfect way to build up Balor as the real future of the WWE.

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