Samoa Joe is back.

The Samoan Submission Machine was put on the shelf with an unspecified injury back in January. He had been pursuing an AEW title rematch after dropping the belt to MJF at Worlds End and had defeated Mike Bailey in a Dynamite singles match before being taken off TV.

Tony Khan then announced the return of Joe on Twitter before this week's episode of the Wednesday night show in Portland, Oregon.

Samoa Joe faced Cody Chhun in a singles match. Excalibur mentioned on commentary that the heavyweight star had been out of action after suffering an injury while training, but did not provide any further details.


The former WWE star went on to pick up the victory in his return match, defeating Chhun in less than three minutes. HOOK, who had been running The Opps in Joe's absence, was waiting to give a hug to the returning star after his match.

Darby Allin defeated MJF to win the AEW World Championship on Dynamite last week. So we'll have to see if Samoa Joe goes after the world title again now that he's back, or if he tries to settle the score with MJF first.