What Could Have Been: What If WWE Strapped Up AEW Star Samoa Joe At Crown Jewel 2018?

Samoa Joe will be challenging for his second AEW World Championship at the upcoming WrestleDream pay-per-view event, facing "Hangman" Adam Page for the title. One week before WrestleDream, however, WWE hits Perth, Australia for its Crown Jewel event — and as it happens, Joe also has history with Crown Jewel, WWE PLEs in Australia, and world championships.

It was just seven years ago that Joe was wrestling at Crown Jewel with the WWE Championship on the line, challenging AJ Styles for the fourth time that year in a months-long angle. With so many shots at the title and a disqualification victory at SummerSlam, it felt certain for a time that Joe would earn the distinction of becoming world champion in ROH, TNA, and WWE, especially given that he was killing it on the mic during the feud. But each and every time he challenged Styles, he fell short; Styles swept Joe with wins at SummerSlam, Hell in a Cell, Super Showdown (WWE's first-ever Australia PLE) and Crown Jewel in 2018.

Joe never ending up holding a world title in WWE; despite more attempts after the Styles feud and runs with the United States Championship, he was sidelined to commentary and briefly (but memorably) returned to "NXT," winning the NXT Championship one last time before being released from the company. He joined AEW in 2022 and has gone on to win the AEW world, trios, and TNT titles. But what if Crown Jewel had set into motion a different sequence of events? What if WWE pulled the trigger on Samoa Joe, making him WWE Champion and properly getting behind him as a major player?

Just one week after Styles defeated Joe to retain his title at Crown Jewel, he lost it to Daniel Bryan (AEW's Bryan Danielson) after the challenger delivered a low-blow followed by the Busaiku knee during "WWE SmackDown," turning heel in the process. That run saw Bryan become "The New Daniel Bryan" and introduce a "cruelty-free" WWE Championship belt, holding the hemp-and-wood title until WrestleMania where he dropped it to Kofi Kingston in the famous "KofiMania" storyline.

If Joe had captured the title, one imagines he wouldn't be losing it to Bryan so soon. Furthermore, Joe would have taken his place atop "SmackDown" as the top heel — maybe Bryan's entire heel turn never comes to pass, allowing him to sink back into his usual role as babyface underdog challenger, maybe even renewing his intense ROH rivalry with Joe, this time for the WWE title to cement Joe's maiden run as champion.

That would also mean the following pay-per-view event, Survivor Series, would have seen a different champion vs. champion match, with Joe rather than Bryan going up against Brock Lesnar. Joe and Lesnar had faced one another just the year before, both in singles action at Great Balls of Fire and as part of a four-way at SummerSlam also involving Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman, for the Universal Champonship that Lesnar carried into Survivor Series. And though at any juncture it would be a long shot, there's a chance Joe gets the win over Lesnar with no title on the line. If that had happened, Joe's position atop the new hierarchy of late 2010s WWE would have been securing, altering wrestling history forever.

This timeline would see Joe in the position of heel champion in the face of "KofiMania" and Kingston's break through to the main event picture, and that represents in itself an entirely different set of butterfly effect consequences. Joe would have been a great villain for Kofi to try and overcome, but in this timeline, it's entirely possible he thwarts Kingston's title challenge altogether, putting a very different spin on the New Day's eventual singles successes. From Kofi and Big E's WWE Championship wins to Xavier Woods becoming King of the Ring (also at Crown Jewel), the New Day might have never broken the proverbial glass ceiling in a Joe-dominated WWE. Joe beating Lesnar at Survivor Series and ending "KofiMania" at WrestleMania 35 represents a strange closing of the loop in light of what actually happened — Kofi leaving WrestleMania victorious, only to be dethroned by Lesnar after just six seconds on the Fox premiere of "SmackDown."

All that being said, Joe has proven to be a giving veteran, and "KofiMania" ending in defeat for the New Day is near as far-fetched as Joe being picked to go over Lesnar. If Joe had carried the title into WrestleMania as the fallible heel champion, like Bryan was, his first WWE title reign may indeed have ended at Kingston's hands. In that instance, the question becomes whether Joe would enjoy further success following that initial run at the top.

In real life, Joe won the United States Championship on two occasions throughout 2019, but his run on the main roster fizzled out thanks to a Wellness Policy violation (remember those?) and injuries. Even if Joe traded those US title reigns for another stint as WWE Champion, it's hard to pretend injuries weren't a key factor in his eventual departure, and the human body isn't subject to fantasy booking. However, there's a chance that a recently-crowned WWE Champion and solidified main-eventer (as Joe could have been) has a spot on the roster one way or the other, and doesn't wind up returning to "NXT" at a time when Vince McMahon was actively phasing out talent like him. Perhaps his AEW run doesn't happen at all — he doesn't become TNT Champion, doesn't dethrone MJF at Worlds End 2023, doesn't found The Opps, and doesn't capture the trios titles from the Death Riders.

There's a labyrinthine number of branching pathways if Joe never joins AEW — if he doesn't challenge MJF at Grand Slam, maybe Adam Cole doesn't jump off an entrance ramp and break his ankle, and perhaps The Devil storyline turns out to be good, or at least come to a conclusive and satisfying end. Joe not being there for CM Punk and Jack Perry's altercation at All In 2023 also removes the man who reportedly got between them that day, perhaps putting a different sequence of events into motion in London. It's almost impossible to argue in hindsight that Joe never switching promotions would be a huge loss for AEW — but it's also impossible not to look at his upcoming world title match at the age of 46, think about the first Crown Jewel, the first PLE in Australia, and Saturday's Crown Jewel PLE in Australia, and wonder what he could have been for WWE.