How WWE Could Have Done AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura The Right Way

AJ Styles is the face of SmackDown Live at this point and the image of him holding the WWE Championship has become all too familiar. It’s great that Styles is holding the top title on SmackDown Live, but with a guy like Shinsuke Nakamura around it’s easy to see how The King Of Strong Style is a viable candidate for champion as well.

This subject was recently brought up on Wrestling Observer Live where Bryan Alvarez opened up about how WWE might have already missed the boat so to speak if they really wanted to get all they could out of Styles vs Nakamura.

“So the obvious ending to this is that they have a match, Nakamura goes for the low blow, AJ’s wearing a cup, and he takes the cup out and then he beats Nakamura. Unfortunately, so you’ve done three matches and AJ’s still the champion like Nakamura got a title run. This should have begun at WrestleMania where Nakamura won the title and then you could start your low blow heel stuff there. It could end with him doing the low blow, AJ takes out the cup, and wins the title back. That’s a fine little program.”

“But the way it’s going right now it’s just — Nakamura needs to be the champion. He’s been here forever AJ’s been the champion for a long, long time he can win it back whenever he wants. This is not a situation where I mean for business he needs to be the champion and Nakamura doesn’t. There’s nothing about this that tells me that Nakamura should not be the champion. It’s time for something different on Smackdown — I thought he was gonna win the title at WrestleMania and he didn’t. I don’t know how you end this storyline with Nakamura winning the title with the way this story has been put together.”

It was also pointed out how there are a plethora of great babyfaces for Shinsuke Nakamura to work against on SmackDown Live where on the other hand the heel side is quite sparse at the top.

It might make sense for Nakamura’s third try with a low blow to work at Backlash. Only time will tell how WWE develops Shinsuke Nakamura vs AJ Styles but they might need to consider something different if they want fans to keep paying attention.

If you use any portion of the quotes in this article please credit Wrestling Observer Live with a H/T to Still Real To Us for the transcription