7 Ups And 5 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Feb 13)

3. Samoan Destroyer

samoa joe sami zayn
WWE.com

Kudos to WWE for not wasting the debut of Samoa Joe on the main roster. The Samoan Submission Machine has left a path of destruction in his first three weeks.

Joe took out Seth Rollins two weeks ago, defeated Roman Reigns last week, and ambushed Sami Zayn on Monday. Zayn had just won a hard-fought match against Rusev when Joe jumped him and left him lying in a heap. It was a beating that continued to establish Joe as a threat to everyone on the roster, heaped more sympathy on Zayn (who was wiped after wrestling Rusev), and set up Joe’s first real feud while Rollins recovers.

Hopefully, WWE isn’t planning to simply make Joe a henchman or intermediary boss on Rollins’ quest to defeat the big boss, Triple H, because they’ve very quickly made him look like a top guy in just three short weeks.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.