Brock Lesnar vs Samoa Joe WWE Great Balls of Fire, 9 July, 2017 - Universal Championship - WWE

At WrestleMania 33, Brock Lesnar defeated Goldberg to win the Universal Championship. The following night on Raw, Lesnar's advocate Paul Heymanteased a match between Lesnar and Roman Reigns, since Lesnar and Reigns were the only two people to have defeated The Undertaker at WrestleMania. Lesnar then went absent from Raw for several weeks due to his status as a part-time wrestler. During this time, Reigns, Braun Strowman, Seth Rollins, Finn Bálor, Bray Wyatt, and Samoa Joe each indicated their desire to challenge Lesnar for the Universal Championship. Due to Strowman being sidelined from an arm injury, General Manager Kurt Angle scheduled an extreme rules fatal five-way match at Extreme Rules between the other five, with the winner earning a title match at Great Balls of Fire.[6] Joe won the match and confronted Lesnar's advocate Paul Heyman the following night on Raw, stating that he did not fear Lesnar and wanted to face him. Joe then applied the Coquina Clutch on Heyman to send a message to Lesnar, who returned the following week and got into a brawl with Joe, which was broken up by the Raw locker room. In sit-down interviews on the June 19 episode, both Lesnar and Joe expressed their confidence that they could beat the other. The following week, as Lesnar was making his entrance, Joe ambushed Lesnar from behind and applied the Coquina Clutch on him three times, nearly causing Lesnar to pass out. Joe stopped the third hold only after some other wrestlers pulled him off of Lesnar. On the final Raw before Great Balls of Fire, the two had a live split-screen interview. They taunted each other and Joe left to find where Lesnar was. He eventually found him, but was held back by security.