Samoa Joe Is Sticking Around On Commentary For WWE Raw

The big news on this week’s episode of FS1’s WWE Backstage was that John Morrison signed a multi-year deal with the company, but that was reported months ago in real life, so the actual biggest news was probably that Samoa Joe will be a member of the Raw commentary team for a while.

Joe has been recovering from a thumb injury and hasn’t wrestled since the King of the Ring tournament in September. While out of action, he has appeared on pre-show and draft panels, episodes of WWE Backstage, and the Raw announce team. He’ll now be a regular at that last thing until he can wrestle again, replacing Dio Maddin, who has been off Raw since he was attacked by Brock Lesnar in November. The official Raw commentary team is now Samoa Joe, Vic Joseph, and Jerry Lawler.

According to WWE Backstage, Dio Maddin will go back to the Performance Center to train as a wrestler. Before he became almost definitely the only person to say “boomer mentality” on Monday Night Raw, the former professional football player had at the PC for about three years, wrestling on NXT house shows and the occasional dark match.

Appropriately, Maddin is already incorporating his brief commentary career into his future in-ring one, tweeting “Matt Riddle moved on to Goldberg so I’ll retire Brock.”