As far as the main roster is concerned, this has been Samoa Joe's year. Dude has been fire on the mic, arguably or not arguably the best heel in the biz. Over with the crowd, believable character and has put on some great matches to boot. But we're now 3 PPV matches into the Styles/Joe feud, and Joe has not won any of them. Their match at Summerslam ended in a DQ fuck finish, their match at Hell in a Cell ended in a draw fuck finish, and their match at the Australia show ended with Joe tapping to the Calf Crusher. With the announcement that Styles will defend the title against Daniel Bryan in Saudi Arabia, there's a good possibility that the feud is now over. And if so... da fuck?
It wouldn't be so bad if not preceded by the Styles vs Nakamura feud, which I believe had 4 PPV matches, two of which ended in some sort of DQ fuck finish, and the other two ended with Styles beating Nak clean. Nakamura never won, which usually wouldn't be that bad, but the character could have really benefited from a big win in his disappointing main roster run. Styles dropping the title before winning it back would have worked - considering that Brock Lesnar was having a never-ending boring title run over on Raw. A little hot potato action on Smackdown wouldn't have hurt in that case, to keep things exciting and to contrast Raw.
And now it feels like we're in the exact same situation with Joe. Having him beat Styles once and then having Styles win the belt back would work, if they're that insistent on having AJ come out as the champion at the end of this feud. The storyline has consisted of Joe constantly trying to get inside AJ's head by threatening his family. The only thing Joe's plan has accomplished so far is get more opportunities to wrestle AJ. Which is fine, but if that's only only payoff and Joe never wins the belt, then the plan has ultimately failed. And Joe's plan failing undermines him as a heel. And I really don't want to see that, given how good of a heel Joe is.
It wouldn't be so bad if not preceded by the fact that Joe has not won any big match in ages. It seems like the biggest PPV win he had was way back when he won the multi-man #1 contender match at face Brock for the title, if anyone remembers that. If so, that was over a year ago.
AJ's title reign has now almost reached a full year. That along with him being on the cover of WWE's latest video game seem like great things on paper, considering that it's AJ Styles holding the WWE Championship after all. But if it hurts Nakamura and Joe in the long run, was it worth it? Is WWE still trying to erase CM Punk's legacy further by having another guy with a really long world title reign? Who should Styles drop the belt to if not Joe? Those are the questions for discussion.