8 Ups And 5 Downs From WWE Raw (Jan 27)

7. The Best Laid Plans

While it’s unclear whether it was part of an angle, Samoa Joe’s injury helped tell the story between adversaries a little better.

Kevin Owens and Joe anticipated that Seth Rollins and his hired goons would likely cheat to win, so they enlisted the help of the Viking Raiders to take out AOP backstage, leaving them with an even fight against Rollins and Buddy Murphy for the Raw Tag Team Championship.

But an errant dive resulted in an injury to Joe, forcing him from the match. KO fought on valiantly, but the numbers game eventually overcame him, and he fell to the tag champs.

Even when you plan for different variables, another can pop up at any time. That’s what happened here with Joe’s injury, and it left a plausible reason for the challengers to come up short.

Now, here’s hoping that really was part of the storyline and not the real deal.