Samoa Joe’s WWE Status, Why Riddle Dropped Championship

With major WWE announce team changes, people are asking what Samoa Joe’s WWE status is. Also, we can discuss why Riddle dropped the United States Championship at WrestleMania Sunday night.

Samoa Joe’s WWE Status

By now, the major WWE announce team shakeup has sunk in, but it left us wondering what Samoa Joe’s WWE status was.

Reason being, when the game of musical announcer chairs came to an end, Samoa Joe was a man without an announce chair.

There may be a good and intriguing reason for that.

WWE made an official announcement covering all the changes, but didn’t elaborate much on some of the end results.

The big news, of course, was the new name: Adnan Virk, formerly of ESPN and other outlets. Virk will be taking one of the RAW announce chairs, along side Byron Saxton and the returning-to-RAW Corey Graves.

Something that was snuck in at the very end of the posting?

Samoa Joe’s status with the company.

Specifically, they said this:

Samoa Joe remains part of the WWE talent roster

Now, that is somewhat ambiguous, and likely on purpose. WWE does consider it’s announcers part of the talent roster…so it might just mean that.

However, as good as Joe has been from the announce position…he was and is a WWE Superstar. He just happens to seem to be very injury-prone or snake-bit.

So, is the shuffling an indication that Samoa Joe might actually be nearing an in-ring return? There may be a glimmer of hope.

After all, if you check social media from the weekend, plenty expected a Joe release was imminent, and were hoping the Superstar would leap to, and succeed in, AEW.

At least for now, Joe remains with WWE. Perhaps the company may bring him in and build out the long-rumored and somewhat existing Samoan stable, using Joe alongside Universal Champion Roman Reigns.

It isn’t like those two don’t have a history, too…so could Samoa Joe somehow become next to challenge the Tribal Chief?

Plenty of possibilities for Samoa Joe, especially if he is cleared to return, and is actually doing so.

Stay tuned!

Why Riddle Dropped Championship

Hopefully by now, you’ve caught up on both nights of WrestleMania. If so, you may be wondering why Riddle dropped the United States Championship on Sunday’s final night of fun.

Well, as it turns out…Riddle wasn’t really ever supposed to hold the title. So the change on Sunday was WWE doing a course correction, if you will.

Put it another way, it’s another example of WWE not always having, or sticking to, a plan.

Riddle won the title from Bobby Lashley not long ago, in a match that was supposed to involve Keith Lee.

For reasons we’ve yet to learn or understand, Keith Lee has basically disappeared from WWE television of late…though he has teased a return, and we caught him doing a “watch along” last week.

It would stand to reason that Lee was likely to win the title, but that didn’t happen and Lashley needed to drop it…so Riddle got the gold.

Since there wasn’t a plan for Riddle to have a run with it, WWE opted to get the belt on Sheamus instead. According to the Observer, this title change was all about fixing things moving forward.

It sounds like WWE may have R-Truth type plans for Riddle…which would be all sorts of a waste. As goofy as he can be, WWE would be well-served to take a few pages out of 2021 Hall of Famer RVD‘s playbook, instead of Truth’s, when it comes to Riddle.

I definitely see a chance for Riddle to have a similar career to RVD’s. To limit Riddle now to a mere backstage punchline would be a tad bizarre.

Or, par for the course with WWE.