United States championship match
Samoa Joe (c) vs. Rey Mysterio
Hampered by an injury, Rey couldn’t take the red, white and blue belt off Joe at WrestleMania 35. But fueled by a desire to make his son proud, the lucha legend is healed up and ready to make history as WWE’s latest grand slam champ.
The Road to Money in the Bank
For a while, we weren’t even sure if Mysterio would be able to compete in MetLife Stadium on April 7. A bad landing during a match with Baron Corbin the week before ‘Mania threatened to take him out of the match altogether. But with his son Dominick sitting ringside, he showed up for his United States title shot. Unfortunately, he didn’t last long.
With a few more weeks to get back to full strength, Rey and Joe went at it again in non-title action on the April 29 Raw. The outcome was different, and even though he didn’t capture the one strap missing from his WWE resume, the Master of the 6-1-9 did get to share a cool moment with Dominick.
Since then, their feud has been as much about Dominick as it has Mysterio or Joe. The Samoan Submission Machine tried some of the same family-focused mind games that he used while beefing with AJ Styles over the WWE title last year:
And a callback by Cesaro to Rey’s 2005 feud with Eddie Guerrero over custody of Dominick set-up their match on the ‘go home’. Cesaro does have a point though. Dominick does look a lot like Samoa Joe. Luckily, this program hasn’t gone full Maury.
What’s at stake?
The presence of Rey’s son - who’s been training with the likes of Lance Storm for the past year or so - does raise the possibility he could get involved. Mostly, WWE’s focused on two questions: will Mysterio atone for his poor showing at the Showcase of the Immortals, and can he become the company’s latest Grand Slam champion?
Considering the length of Rey’s career, and that it’s mostly been spent with companies like WCW and WWE who’ve used the United States title, it’s shocking he’s never held the strap first worn by Harley Race.
If he does, it will end Joe’s first main roster title run after two successful pay-per-view (PPV) defenses.
We’ll find out tomorrow night (Sun., May 19) when Money in the Bank comes our way on WWE Network from Hartford, Connecticut’s XL Center.