AJ Styles: The Phenomenal One’s 10 Best Matches Prior to Joining WWE
By Tim Sherry
2. Vs. Shinsuke Nakamura – Wrestle Kingdom 10 – 2015
Ever wonder why fans obsess over a potential Styles/Nakamura Wrestlemania 34 match? Or why the fans in St. Louis, Missouri at Money In The Bank went ballistic over the the two just merely staring each other down in the middle of the ring during the MITB match back in June? It all stems from their one and only singles match for the IWGP Intercontinental title at Wrestle Kingdom 10 in January of 2016. In what would be Styles second to last match with NJPW and Nakamura’s final singles match before leaving the company that he accomplished so much in just four weeks later, the duo put on quite simply, one of the best matches in the history of the company and left wrestling fans all over the world with hope that it could potentially happen again.
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The narrative for this match was quite simple. Styles had battled the best of the best in NJPW and at some point was victorious over all of them. Okada, Tanahashi, Suzuki, Ibushi, Katsuyori Shibata, Tetsuya Naito, Hiroyoshi Tenzan, the list goes on and on. The one mountain that AJ had not climbed however, was against “The King of Strong Style”. Having captured three IWGP Heavyweight titles, five Intercontinental titles, while also winning the 2011 G1 Climax, Nakamura was another one of the living legends in NJPW. It just made all the sense in the world for these two to throw down at what is the company’s biggest show of the year.
To say hopes were high for this match is an understatement. And any time the expectations are that high, sometimes they are not attainable. But apparently Styles and Nakamura never got that memo because when the duo got together this night at The Tokyo Dome, they put on a sure-fire top ten match in the history NJPW. Their chemistry was off the charts and the back and forth they displayed kept the 25,000 in attendance on their edge of their seats for the entire 24-plus minutes the match lasted.
In the end, it was Nakamura getting his hand raised but really, everybody won in this match. Just a month later both men were in the WWE and now over 18 months since this brilliance, they find themselves in close proximity to each other once again. Hopefully their new company gets out of their own way and allows these two to go at it. American fans deserve to see what these guys can do together as evidenced by this classic encounter.