Top-Down Smackdown: Joe Is Gonna Kill Time

WWE is the only form of sports entertainment I can think of where they’ll thrill to sign a big-name talent – then thrill even more to change the name that was worth money, pretending their new talent never had a past at all. Thus does Monty Brown, former pro-football player and TNA champion get signed to become Marcus Cor Von, a character given no backstory at all. Bryan Danielson, dubbed the best wrestler in the world by Internet fans, debuts as a rookie character named Daniel Bryan. In perhaps the most embarrassing example I can think of, veteran superstar Tony Atlas returned in the early ’90s as a Zulu warrior named Saba Simba. It’s no secret why this is done – WWE wants to create proprietary trademarks, and many wrestlers don’t want to license their own real name as such.

And yet when you think about the most memorable big-name debuts, you think of Chris Jericho first appearing as the result of a millennium countdown, or the first time Bobby Heenan showed Ric Flair’s belt on WWF TV, or the way Chris Benoit, Perry Saturn, Dean Malenko and Eddie Guerrero all sat ringside on Raw following a WCW contract dispute. In all cases, the familiar name was used, and it was assumed that the audience knew who they were.

WWE hasn’t done that in a while – unless you count the unique case of Sting, who thus far has been one-and-done, so pushing him as a new character would make no sense. And I can’t think of any time they’ve done it with a TNA talent, again unless you count Sting. Awesome Kong, Chris Harris, Monty Brown, Ron Killings – all got name changes to some degree or another.

So that’s why it was exciting to not just see Samoa Joe make his WWE debut on NXT, but make it with his familiar name and a theme song that’s just close enough to his TNA music to be recognizable. To show it’s going all-in, WWE even created him an official T-shirt already.

So why not debut him on Raw, then? Ay, there’s the rub.

An NXT debut ensures he debuts in front of serious fans more likely to know who he is, and it gives WWE that big moment of “OMG Samoa Joe’s here!” However, because of the loose storyline continuity between Raw and NXT, this also means that they can later call him up to the main roster under a new name. “Joe Badd,” for example, or, knowing Vince McMahon, “Joe Mamma.” As long as they keep the “Joe” part, fans will still chant “Joe is gonna kill you,” and it should be easy enough to make a new name around it that WWE can trademark.

Or maybe Joe just let them own the name. I’d bet money, though, that if he makes it on the main roster, it will be under a modified moniker.

What would you rename him, if you were forced to be that guy?

(also talk back about Raw below)