WWE Money in the Bank 2018: Results, Highlights, and Grades

Photo Source: WWE.com

WWE Championship Last Man Standing Match

AJ Styles (c) vs. Shinsuke Nakamura

Result: AJ Styles defeated Shinsuke Nakamura

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

First thought when this match was announced as next: Holy crap, Ronda/Nia is main eventing tonight. Second thought: Alexa Bliss is cashing in tonight. Third thought: Wait, why is this match not at least the penultimate? It definitely seems a little early for the grudge match with a definitive stipulation for the top prize in your company. If not the main event, surely this should have gone after the Men’s MITB Ladder match to give the illusion of a cash-in, no?

Out of all 923 Styles/Nakamura matches in WWE (give or take a few), this was probably my favorite. There was a sense throughout that this one was the end. At WrestleMania, you knew it was just the first chapter. Greatest Royal Rumble and Backlash didn’t feel like final encounters. But the brutality in this contest seemed more akin to a last go before moving on to other opponents.

Take the sequence in the later stages of the match with the table. First, the suplex that put Styles rib-first onto the edge of the table. Adam Cole may say it’s nothing, but to the rest of us mortals that looks rough. To top it off, Nakamura launched Styles at about a million miles an hour into the table, causing it to disintegrate. Yikes.

Nakamura and his facial expressions made this match, too. There’s not many superstars with the kind of nonverbal communication skills Nakamura has. The switch he flips to go from happy-go-lucky to sad and depressed to begging for his life gets a lot of work.

It wouldn’t be a Styles/Nakamura match without a low blow or two. If we’re giving out grades on those, Styles wins in a landslide just based on the sheer brutality of his kick. But this one had everything you want from a big fight, or a main event. The Phenomenal Forearm to cap it off was brilliantly devastating.

It’s a little shocking to see Nakamura come up short again, because this one did have that feeling of finality. It’ll be interesting to see just where things go for both superstars from here. Looking at the match as a whole, though, it was a perfect cap to the rivalry — if it’s actually over.