Look at Samoa Joe's Muay Thai Workout Buddy

Hell of a workout squad Photo via @SamoaJoe

The above picture is not doctored in any way. On the left is Samoa Joe. On the right is, you guessed it, Big Dave Batista. They're flanking a guy named Josh Raff, whom I can only assume is either a training buddy or their instructor. Either way, it's interesting to see that Joe and Batista train for muay thai and catch wrestling at the same facility.

Of course, the photo is probably just a bit of serendipity, two guys in the biz posing for a picture to pop the marks like me. But Joe is real-life friends with John Cena back from their days in the Southern California wrestling schools. Cena's most impactful rival is Batista, who also appears to be friends with CM Punk, who is Joe's most notable rival. It's impossible to put together given the frosty diplomatic state between Punk and WWE and the current budding movie stardom of Batista, but man, wouldn't SummerSlam have been monstrously epic this year with some kind of tag match featuring those two feuds entangled? Imagine the inevitable headline rematch between Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar buttressed by Joe and Cena battling Punk and Batista. That is the kind of thing that would make SummerSlam the WrestleMania of the summer that WWE wants it to be.

Alas, it's all fantasy booking anyway. Punk's got his heart set on the real fighting for now, and Batista's going to be a solid supporting actor type in action movies going forward. But hey, it's still cool as shit that Joe and Batista work out at the same gym, which is all that matters with this kind of thing, I suppose.