WWE SmackDown: How They Can Fix Shinsuke Nakamura

April 4th, 2017 – SmackDown Live

It’s the first SmackDown Live since WrestleMania 33, and everyone is expecting an appearance from Nakamura since he didn’t debut on Raw the night before.

Halfway through the show, John Cena’s music hits, and The Miz and Maryse make their way down to the ring. They’re in the ring cutting a promo on Cena and Nikki Bella, the pair they lost to in a mixed-tag match the Sunday before.

As they were exiting the ring, the lights went down, and Lee England Jr. made his way to the entrance ramp violin in hand. After a short solo, the arena went completely dark and once again the crowd hit their feet.

Nakamura’s music hit, and the crowd again was excited for the most charismatic man in WWE today. Not as excited as they were a year ago, but the crowd was still on their feet.

(The next week Sami Zayn would come to the blue brand in this year’s Superstar Shake-Up.)

Over the next few weeks, Shinsuke would be involved in a lackluster feud with Dolph Ziggler that would eventually lead to Shinsuke winning his TV debut match at Backlash.

WWE purposefully kept Nakamura off TV leading into his match with Ziggler, a decision that hurt him in the long run. Fans were ready to see Shinsuke once he was called up, but since they kept him off TV for almost four weeks, fan interest waned a little bit, and by the time Nakamura and Ziggler got in the ring together, fans had lost interest.

The match was the worst Nakamura had had to that point in his WWE career didn’t help much either.

After Backlash, Nakamura was placed in the Money in the Bank Ladder match against Zayn, Kevin Owens, Baron Corbin, AJ Styles, and Ziggler.

Corbin would attack Shinsuke before the match started taking Nakamura out for the majority of the match. Shinsuke would return, but Corbin would go on to win the Money in the Bank briefcase.

The attack would lead to another boring and hard to watch feud between Corbin and Shinsuke, which culminated in a match at Battleground, a match Shinsuke won via disqualification after a low blow by Corbin.