WrestleMania: WWE Championship - AJ Syles (c) vs. Shinsuke Nakamura

[ShinChan]

Nak has been poorly handled since his debut. His first feud was an absolute abomination - to paraphrase Sam, "hey, check out this new guy, he looks different, acts different, has a neat entrance and is just as good as Dolph Fucking Ziggler." And after that, they had him fail to beat one of the worst WWE champions in history at the second biggest event of the year. The damage that did is almost incalculable.

And yet, fans still want to cheer him because of his entrance and he is something different.

Strangely, he has been booked as something of a special attraction but then not actually presented as anything special, at least not consistently. He has beaten Orton and Cena, he has won the Rumble and shown that with the right opponent, he can have a good match in a hybrid strong/WWE style but then in between there is nothing. There is a seeming lack of trust or a thought that Nak is maybe too weird.

That alone suggests that his match with AJ will not get the time it requires.

Had it been done properly, Nakamura would have taken the title from Jinder, defended it in a series of matches and feuds - Jinder, Orton, Cena, Owens, Sami, perhaps even teamed with AJ against SamiKO before AJ wins the Rumble or simply challenges Nak because there is no else left to deal with.

You just booked Nakamura perfectly. Keeping his mystique. Also undefeated at least at the main roster. Just perfect.

I just think that WWE wanted to test Nakamura with Jinder about if he'll continue getting good reactions. And he did. Nakamura chants were quite loud. And WWE wanted to make him World Champion at Wrestlemania. Still doesn't justify his booking though.

[smarkmouth]

You know the problem with building a feud around the match itself being a potential Dream Match? There's a high possibility of failing to live up to the hype. Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to the match, but I expect a LOT of misappropriated disappointment after the contest. Tonight's developments were solid, but this feud needs a next-gear, and fast!

[DNA 2.0]

You know the problem with building a feud around the match itself being a potential Dream Match? There's a high possibility of failing to live up to the hype. Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to the match, but I expect a LOT of misappropriated disappointment after the contest. Tonight's developments were solid, but this feud needs a next-gear, and fast!

And you couldn't be more correct. Even though it was 20 minutes long, it felt like 10, and felt extremely underwhelming. It was solid, but nowhere near anybody expected it to be. It didn't tear down the house and the crowd couldn't get into it. I don't really know what went wrong here.

I feel like all this hype will make this match feel less good than what it actually was and the crowd didn't really help.

[smarkmouth]

The failure of expectation management aside, I can't fault the crowd too much. Could have been an absolute barn burner and the crowd would have still been spent after six hours of wrestling.

[Undying]

I haven't even seen this entire match yet or anything passed it on the show. It was probably the one I was most excited for, but unfortunately after everything that happened at Mania already, as soon as I saw them lock up and start slow I passed out asleep.

[semih]

l agree. He is very different man. His fans still support him because he is strong enough.