One week ago, Shinsuke Nakamura won the 2018 Royal Rumble. He beat a field of 29 other competitors and eliminated both John Cena and Roman Reigns to earn a title shot of his choosing at WrestleMania. Nakamura made his decision immediately; he would fight AJ Styles for the WWE Championship.
It's a match made in professional wrestling heaven. The last (and only) time they fought each other was at NJPW's Wrestle Kingdom 10, where they competed for the IWGP Intercontinental Championship. It was 25 minutes of fast-paced, non-stop action; the match is considered a modern classic and a highlight of both men's careers. They left the promotion immediately afterwards to sign with WWE.
And perhaps because of this match's reputation, WWE has taken pains to keep the two apart on SmackDown. Their respective feuds have never overlapped. But Nakamura and Styles did plant seeds for a potential conflict down the road. Every now and then, they would encounter one another backstage and whet fans' appetites. The most direct allusion was at the 2017 Money in the Bank pay-per-view, where Styles and Nakamura stared each other down from opposite sides of the ladder.
But over the past year, while Styles became a 2-time world champion, Nakamura suffered. Prior to the Royal Rumble, the last time Nakamura won a PPV match was in July 2017, when he defeated Baron Corbin via disqualification at Battleground. His last clean PPV win was in May 2017, when he pinned Dolph Ziggler at Backlash. And in that interval between Backlash and the Royal Rumble, he lost consecutive PPV matches to Jinder Mahal, one of the weakest champions in WWE history. He also lost a SmackDown match to Kevin Owens this past December. This was not the curriculum vitae of a man being groomed to fight AJ Styles at WrestleMania.
Fans feared a burial because Nakamura didn't fit Vince McMahon's mold of a top guy. He was tall but not overly muscular. He was jittery and eccentric. He couldn't cut a lengthy promo, because he isn't fluent in English. And although devoted WWE fans knew Nakamura's potential--his NXT run was a clinic in physical storytelling and charisma--it seemed that Vince McMahon didn't.
Yet, here we are. WWE has a little over two months to build Nakamura vs. Styles into a main event, WrestleMania attraction. And that starts with undoing some damage and promoting Nakamura as a dangerous, feared opponent.
Nakamura needs to be a main eventer on SmackDown every week. If he's working a solo match, he needs to squash his opponent. If he's working a tag match, he needs to clear the ring and score the pin. And if along the way, Nakamura "breaks" an opponent's jaw or gets someone "stretchered" out of the arena, all the better. His character is too brash and flamboyant to work as an underdog. Styles needs to be the one who's running scared.
There also needs to be more heat to this feud. This past Tuesday, Nakamura and Styles teamed up to fight Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn. The two men won, and they took their bows together. But that's the sort of thing that should happen after WrestleMania. Now is the time for drama, discontent, and conflict--not mutual love and respect. Both Styles and Nakamura are babyfaces; one of them should turn heel before the month is out. Their upcoming WrestleMania match should not be a friendly competition.
This would be less of a concern in NJPW. Generally speaking, Japanese wrestlers' face/heel distinctions aren't as clearly delineated as Americans'--many Japanese wrestlers display characteristics of both. Often, who fans cheer and boo depends on a wrestler's "fighting spirit" and perceived toughness rather than his or her promos. Japanese audiences tend to treat wrestling as more of an athletic competition than a theatrical drama.
But for a more sentimental, predominantly American audience, Nakamura vs. Styles would benefit from a sudden double cross or a slow disintegration of the partnership. Styles should be the one to turn heel; his 2016-2017 feud with John Cena remains the highlight of his WWE career. And Nakamura can remain a babyface; it requires him to do less talking, and his win at the Royal Rumble was positively received. There's no need to slow that momentum.
A technically brilliant match at WrestleMania is a given; Nakamura vs. Styles will probably steal the show, regardless of how well the match is built over the next two months. But with a classic, well-delineated "good vs. evil" narrative, it can be elevated to the sort of "WrestleMania moment" that WWE chases every year.