According to a report by Dave Meltzer, Samoa Joe has joined the Monday Night Raw commentary team as a permanent replacement for Jerry "The King" Lawler. Lawler was called out for racially insensitive comments a few months back concerning Akira Tozawa.

　　Joe replaced Lawler the week after the incident to get the heat off of him, but Lawler returned shortly after. Joe also replaced commentator and NXT performer Dio Maddin after Maddin became injured by Brock Lesnar back in December of last year.

　　Joe has done short-term and one-off appearances on commentary throughout his in-ring career. As he is not yet medically cleared to wrestle, this could be extremely beneficial for his career--it's a way to keep him on TV while still allowing him to recover and not lose his "spot" so to speak.

　　WWE's next pay-per-view event will be Backlash, on June 14 on the WWE Network. There are only four matches announced including Edge vs Randy Orton in what is being billed as "The Greatest Wrestling Match Ever" and Drew McIntyre defending his WWE Championship against Bobby Lashley.

　　If you want to dive deeper into the weird world of wrestling, check out GameSpot's weekly podcast Wrestle Buddies. Each week, Mat Elfring and Chris E. Hayner talks about the funner things within wrestling, from silly gimmicks to their favorite PPVs. Also, they occasionally interview wrestlers. New episodes arrive every Thursday, and you can check it out on Spotify, Stitcher, and Apple Podcasts.