Shinsuke Nakamura is the man to take the title from Seth Rollins

Seth Rollins has had a phenomenal run as the WWE World Heavyweight Champion, but Shinsuke Nakamura is the man to the title from him. 

Let’s travel back to the WWE 2018 Royal Rumble. The final two competitors remain — Nakamura and Roman Reigns. It had been two consecutive years Reigns was in the final two in the Royal Rumble, except this time the crowd fully expects Reigns to win. Yet, we were all surprised.

It was the beginning of what we initially thought would be a beautiful story for Nakamura. Instead, Nakamura wasn’t able to come out on top in his main event against AJ Styles at WrestleMania 34. We did get a heel turn from Nakamura though. During his time in WWE (since 2016) Nakamura has won the Intercontinental Championship twice and the United States Championship twice as well. But he has never won the World title. That long wait may be over for Nakamura.

This past Monday on Raw, Nakamura teamed up with Cody Rhodes and World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins in a six-man tag match and defeated Dominik Mysterio, Finn Balor, and Damian Priest of The Judgement Day. After the victory, Nakamura expectedly turns on Rollins and takes him out with a Kinshasa.

What is so intriguing about this is it immediately sets up Rollins’ next challenger for the World title. In addition to that, the heel turn (which was desperately needed) comes before the match for the belt instead of after he lost. Under Triple H’s regime, a heel Shinsuke Nakamura could be exactly what the doctor ordered as the head of Monday Night Raw and take over as a top heel on the brand. No matter what, the crowd will sing along to his theme music, but with help from Rollins, Nakamura as a heel could accelerate his significance in the World title scene.

Over six years in the company and having dealt with knee injury after knee injury, Nakamura has never really returned to the stature his career was at once before. This should be the time to solidify himself once again as one of the top stars in the company. For that to happen, he has the be the guy to take the title from Rollins. He also has to defeat Rollins in the rematch for the belt and hold it for a while. Rollins doesn’t need to hold the belt for a long time. He is so over at this point, he doesn’t even need the belt.

Meanwhile, Shinsuke Nakamura needs it more than ever before. He has been working towards this moment since leaving NJPW to join WWE back in 2016. Rollins versus Nakamura at WWE Payback on September 2nd in Pittsburgh and Nakamura finally wins the World Heavyweight Championship.