10 WWE Superstars And The Angles That Made Them Famous

3. Samoa Joe & A 21 Month Title Reign

samoa joe
www.rohwrestling.com

Staying with Ring of Honor and its world championship, when I first became aware of the company it seemed as though it was the property of one man and one man alone. Samoa Joe made his first appearance in Ring of Honor way back in 2002, and despite only being signed for a single match he made such an impression that he was soon signed full-time.

Less than a year after making his bow Joe was the champ, defeating Xavier to become only the third ever ROH Champion. He would change the title to the ROH World Championship by defending it against The Zebra Kid in London in May 2003. It would be 21 months until Joe relinquished the belt, losing it to another man in this list (Austin Aries).

This title run truly established Samoa Joe as one of the baddest men in all of professional wrestling. It was here that crowds began to chant 'Joe's Gonna Kill Ya' and his reputation as a stiff, hard-hitting wrestler was confirmed. TNA then spent a number of years doing all they could to ruin this, but thankfully Joe is back to his violent best today in NXT.

Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.