4 Potential Opponents for Samoa Joe on WWE Raw
By Adam O'Brien
WWE.com
3. Kevin Owens
When he first emerged in 2015 as NXT’s latest acquisition, Kevin Owens was the first man that Samoa Joe set his sights on. “The Prizefighter” was on the verge of making the full-time jump to the main roster, and was taking on all comers in Sami Zayn, Finn Bálor and the debuting Samoa Joe before he left in search of bigger things.
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Now, Kevin Owens is the face of Monday Night Raw as the WWE Universal Champion, with Samoa Joe coming in meaner and more determined to make an impact than ever before. The heel vs. heel dynamic doesn’t always work in WWE, with minor exceptions like we saw between Kevin Owens and Braun Strowman this week, but as of this moment, Kevin Owens vs. Samoa Joe isn’t a rivalry that needs to go long.
Owens and Joe have had the best programmes of their career against much smaller adversaries – Sami Zayn and Finn Bálor come to mind respectively – so a match between these two particular heavyweights could be a short-term experiment to see how these two huge individuals fair against a man of equal stature and style, and would be a fun clash of styles in the sea of variety that is the Raw locker room.
The match they had in the summer of 2015 wasn’t exactly a Match of the Year candidate, but it was an intriguing encounter nonetheless, one that would mean a lot more this year given how much time Samoa Joe and Kevin Owens have had to grow in front of the WWE and NXT audiences respectively.