Samoa Joe made his NXT debut at NXT Takeover: Unstoppable when he confronted Kevin Owens, who was assaulting Sami Zayn, and made the save to a tremendous reaction. Since then, Samoa Joe has constantly been featured as one of the top stars of NXT. He made his Takeover debut at the first edition of NXT Takeover: Brooklyn, where he defeated Baron Corbin.
After that, he teamed up with then-NXT champion Finn Balor to be victorious in the inaugural Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, which he and Balor won at NXT Takeover: Respect.
All this time, it was being said that Samoa Joe was signed to be exclusively on NXT, to help elevate the brand and younger talents, and not to go to the main roster. Joe himself said in an interview that Triple H told him that he isn’t being paid to train, and doesn’t go to the Performance Center much. Many have slammed the idea of Samoa Joe not coming up to the main roster, and WWE Hall of Famer Stone Cold Steve Austin believes that The Samoan Submission Machine should have been on the main roster over a year ago.
However, the word has been lingering for a while that Joe will be called up. In fact, Reddit user /u/FalconArrow (A verified WWE insider) confirmed that there are plans to bring Joe up to the main roster, but there were no creative plans for him at that very time (this was just after Wrestlemania 32).
Samoa Joe won the NXT Championship from Finn Balor at a house show on April 21st, 2016. He also successfully defended the title against Balor at NXT Takeover: The End, thus ending the epic 8-month rivalry between the two.
At NXT Takeover:Brooklyn II, Joe lost the title to Shinsuke Nakamura, who seemed to be crowned as the new face of NXT. Joe dropping the title naturally led to a lot of questions about the rumoured main roster call-up.
According to a report from DailyWrestlingNews.com, it seems that the wait to see Samoa Joe on Raw or SmackDown is almost over. The word is that Joe will be on WWE’s main roster sooner rather than later.
There are a lot of possibilities for Joe considering what happened in Brooklyn over the weekend, but the expectation is Samoa Joe would be exclusive to the Smackdown Live brand, which opens up several possibilities for him
