When Samoa Joe won the AEW World Heavyweight Championship at Full Gear on Saturday, it was one of those deals where you are absolutely stunned for a second because it is so unexpected, and then you think about it for a moment and go: “Wow, now that it’s happened, it makes so much sense.”
This was the biggest shocker for the AEW world title since Jon Moxley thrashed CM Punk three years ago, and even that was sort of foreshadowed since it took place on TV on short notice.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementJoe beating Hangman Adam Page left you stunned, but Joe’s sheer physical presence, the legitimacy he carries into the ring, immediately conveyed: “THIS is the new AEW World Champion.”
With Joe, there is no adjustment period, no “let me think him as champ.” You put a belt in Joe’s hands and it just looks right. You don’t need fireworks exploding behind him, you don’t need the locker room emptying out to carry him on their shoulders.
A bloodied but victorious Samoa Joe and a world title belt just look right.
AEW, to its credit, figured out how to present Joe the right way: The guy who wins or beats you half to death in trying.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementOutside the ring, Joe is a sweetheart, he’s a great guy to hang out with. He’s also the guy you’d never want to pick a fight with in a million years.
Fans respond to that. Wrestling fans, more than anything, respond to honesty. When a character is being presented exactly as they should be, the audience comes with you.
They are going to come with Joe as AEW Champion of the World.
Joe deserves this. This was earned over a long stretch in AEW where Joe has been consistent, believable and authentic in everything he’s done.
AEW gets what it has in Samoa Joe. That WWE put him in NXT — twice! — and never gave him a real world title run is one of the biggest misses of the past 15 years.
Trust me on this, almost every booker — and maybe every booker — will tell you it is way easier to have a babyface chase a heel who's holding the world title than the other way around.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementSamoa Joe has a lot of guys chasing him, and there are at least four built-in main-event programs for him already in AEW.
Obviously, Hangman Page is right there. And then you look at Swerve Strickland, who is already circling the top of the card. And whenever MJF returns, Joe has history with him — real history — and that is something you can go right back to on Day 1.
And, as a wildcard I’d love to see played at some point, Joe has history with Darby Allin. I know I'm not the only one who would really love to see Darby get that long world-title program — I saw Ariel Helwani ask Tony Khan about it in their recent interview.
The other week I told the story of how I convinced Joe to come to TNA by telling him the only reason WWE wanted him was to stop TNA from getting him.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementI’ve been asked how we knew that about then-WWE VP of Talent Jim Ross and WWE. This many years later, with everyone involved long having moved on from WWE, I can tell you:
We were given the actual internal WWE memo where JR stated TNA was talking to CM Punk and Joe, and WWE should probably sign them just in case they became big in TNA.
The two people we wanted to build the future of TNA around in 2005 — Joe and CM Punk — are now once again two of the three biggest world champions in the industry. Crazy to think about.
Toni Storm and Mina Shirakawa can really anchor AEW’s new women's tag-team division.
I am telling you — Ricochet is going to be massive in 2026. He looked great — again — in winning AEW's new National Title in the 12-man Casino Gauntlet match at Full Gear.
Kyle O’Riley beating Mox puts some real wind his sails. I loved that result — Kyle is a great technical wrestler, and having a win over a brutal No Holds Barred performer like Mox adds something new.
Mark Briscoe beating Kyle Fletcher was very interesting to me. It completes a great rebound for a super-talented and great guy.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementKyle is pegged by many — including myself — to be a future main-eventer and world champion, so AEW really has my attention as to what they do with him next.
Mercedes Moné has proven that she’s a team player for AEW, losing her second high-profile challenge for the Women's World Championship — this time losing to Kris Statlander.
Hats off to her for doing business again and so soon after she put over Toni Storm. It is nice to see pros acting like pros.
QT Marshall’s work in AEW has been amazing. I’ll go into his story in the next column but, wow, what story he has and what an impact he’s having.
Maybe because WWE Survivor Series’ current incarnation — with a men’s and women’s WarGames double-cage match as the main draws — is only four years old, some newer fans are surprised to learn just how old it really is.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe first Survivor Series took place on (American) Thanksgiving night, Nov. 26, 1987. That predates both SummerSlam (1988) and the Royal Rumble (TV special in 1988, pay-per-view in 1989).
Jim Crockett Promotions, aka NWA and really the precursor to what became WCW, used to run a Thanksgiving night pay-per-view event called Starrcade, and WWF's Vince McMahon, to hurt them, counter-programmed it with an event he called “Survivor Series,” which was headlined by Hulk Hogan’s team of five taking on Andre the Giant’s team of five.
As if a rematch of sorts from WrestleMania III wouldn’t be damaging enough to Starrcade, McMahon also called up every cable company and said if they carried Starrcade, he wouldn’t let them sell WrestleMania IV six months later.
Several pay-per-view companies dropped Starrcade, which obviously hurt Crockett’s bottom line. That led to Crockett returning fire by putting “Clash of the Champions,” a free TV supershow, up against WWE pay-per-views.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThat was the business and the politics of it, but I always loved the “teams of five strive to survive” gimmick. It is odd in 2025, an era with well over a dozen PLEs that don’t have gimmick themes, to think that WWE felt a November pay-per-view needed an overall gimmick, but times were different.
It was only six years later that the format began to change — there was only one actual Survivor match in 1992, there were none at all in 1998, and each year since it’s never a given what WWE will present.
And in 2022, WarGames — which Dusty Rhodes created for NWA/WCW — came to Survivor Series and seemingly replaced the classic five-on-five tags.
But, given just how many formats WWE's second-oldest PPV/PLE has featured over the past three decades, I wouldn’t bet that WarGames is here to stay forever.
Yeah, the fan in me misses the old format, although I accept its time came and went a generation ago.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementFor talent, it was also one of the few times a mid-card or tag-teamer could interact with a pay-per-view headliner and show the audience — and Vince — “Hey, look at me hanging with your top star.”
One of the best examples came during the final minutes of “The Dream Team” — Dusty Rhodes, the Hart Foundation, and Koko B. Ware — vs. Ted DiBiase’s Million Dollar Team of Honky Tonk Man, Greg Valentine and a mystery partner who turned out to be a brand-new character called The Undertaker.
While that 1990 Survivor Series match is rightly remembered for Taker’s dramatic debut, the final minutes featured last men standing DiBiase and Bret Hart exchanging a breathtaking series of near-falls that the fans went crazy for.
If Vince McMahon wasn’t convinced that Bret Hart had a bright future as a singles star already, Bret got his point across that night.
Speaking of Bret ... the name “Survivor Series,” of course, for many fans of a certain age, brings to mind the Montreal Screwjob, where Bret was infamously double-crossed out of the WWF title by Vince McMahon (with help from Shawn Michaels and referee Earl Hebner) in Montreal in 1997.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementNow that 28 years (!!!) have passed, I think it's safe to say the debate over the Montreal Screwjob — who was right, who was wrong — will rage forever. Fans who weren’t even born in 1997 have life-and-death opinions who was in the right that night. It's one of those stories that every new fan who comes across it has the same reaction — “What? What the hell happened?!” — and can’t wait to learn more.
My view, which hasn’t changed in three decades, is that WWE breached its contract with Bret. They had agreed to give creative control over to how his character was presented — and, on top of that, they’d already broken the reported $20 million over 20 years deal they’d signed, by telling him they couldn’t afford it and he should go see if he could resurrect talks with WCW. Remember, Bret was offered a lot more money to go to WCW in 1996, but took a lesser deal to stay with WWE.
His loyalty wasn’t repaid in kind.
People can take shots at Bret for taking himself seriously, but he’d been granted creative control yet still said he’d drop the title before leaving for WCW. He just wouldn’t drop it in Montreal to Shawn Michaels, a man who, after Bret put him over at WrestleMania XII, shook Bret’s hand and said: “I’ll never do the same for you.”
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementSo, yeah. Survivor Series began as a way for Vince McMahon to screw with Jim Crockett and will forever be linked to Vince screwing over Bret Hart.
Not to make the most infamous double-cross in wrestling history all about me, but I had a tryout at WWE — set up by Bret and his trainer, Leo Burke — slated literally the day after the Montreal Screwjob.
There was no social media in 1997, and like many people, I went to bed after the pay-per-view thinking, “Well, that was a really weird finish,” rather than realizing the industry had just changed.
"WWE Raw" was at the Corel Center (now the Canadian Tire Center) in Ottawa, Ontario on Nov. 10, 1997. I reported backstage and went looking for Bret. I could tell there was a weird atmosphere, but I didn’t think there was anything out of the ordinary going on.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementSo I see Steve Lombardi, the Brooklyn Brawler, and he’s on the other side of the ice rink. He waves, I wave back, and I yell, “Steve, you know where Bret is?” And Brawler just starts freaking out. He is running toward me, waving his arms in that “Cut it out!” manner and telling me to be quiet.
He said, “Don’t say that name! Don’t say Bret’s name!” and he takes me to one side and clues me in on why Bret isn’t there.
So, as “Bret’s guy,” needless to say my big WWE tryout didn’t go amazingly. I basically sat around all night — and for the taping the next night in Cornwall — with no one from WWE having any interest in taking a look at me.
Bret said Vince screwed him, Vince said Bret screwed Bret.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementNot that history cares, but Scott D’Amore got screwed too!
It is interesting to note that the Elimination Chamber actually debuted at Survivor Series back in 2002. The annual February Elimination Chamber is now second to only the Royal Rumble as the PLE that shapes WrestleMania.
But WWE tried, and failed, to spin another big event out of Survivor Series way back in 1991.
After having Ric Flair cost Hogan the world title against The Undertaker at Survivor Series on Nov. 27, a Wednesday, WWE presented a rematch on pay-per-view just six days later.
They called it “This Tuesday in Texas,” and the buy-rate was worse than the title.
Six days was simply too tight of a turnaround even for a weekend pay-per-view, much less one on Tuesday.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWWE eventually returned to the idea of a Tuesday pay-per-view in the mid-2000s but, again, “Taboo Tuesday” didn’t catch on.
I’m very interested in what WWE does this weekend in San Diego with John Cena’s Intercontinental Title rematch with Dominik Mysterio. “Dirty Dom” clearly is very close to being a massive star for the company and, to be honest, I probably wouldn’t have booked the rematch at all.
I would've had Cena retire as champion, but wouldn’t have had him beat Dominik a second time in just a few weeks. Maybe we’re going to have one of the Judgment Day interfere and turn on Dom? There’s a lot of ways WWE can go with this match, which is exactly how you want an audience to feel.
The D'Amore Drop is a weekly guest column on Uncrowned written by Scott D’Amore, the Canadian professional wrestling promoter, executive producer, trainer and former wrestler best known for his long-standing role with TNA/IMPACT Wrestling, where he served as head of creative. D’Amore is the current owner of leading Canadian promotion Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling.
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