A freshly heel Shinsuke Nakamura with a vicious attitude and brutal moveset has set his eyes on Seth ‘Freakin’ Rollins WWE World Heavyweight Championship. He’s lost once but should he lose twice? In short, no, he shouldn’t. We’ve seen this before, with Shinsuke himself and multiple other wrestlers. A heel
turn, relentless attacks, and a big push for them to lose clean to the champion twice and disappear
into the midcard to end up in a dwindling tag team

Shinsuke turned heel on the August 7th , 2023, edition of Monday Night RAW, attacking Seth after a six-man tag match against The Judgement Day. It set up a title match for Payback, obviously that’s what
Nakamura wanted, and he got his wish but did lose clean to the resilient champion fighting through
his real-life back issues that got brought into storyline.

Seth, the uber babyface champion, challenged Nakamura again for a title match at Fastlane with Nakamura picking a last man standing match as the stipulation. It is the PERFECT match for Nakamura to display his ruthless persona and mercifully attack Rollins injured back to walk out champion.

And he should walk out as champion. There is little to no point having someone turn heel, push for a
month or so before they move onto a new challenger. That was the Vince model but hopefully Triple
H can fight against that model and go with his newer and fresher approach.

Nakamura is 43 years old now, he’s on his way to the end of his career with less and less appearances but he’s only ever had 7 title reigns since he joined WWE in 2016. He’s held the Intercontinental Championship, United States Championship, and the NXT Championship twice each, and held the Smackdown Tag Team Championships alongside Cesaro (which I really DO NOT remember ever happening.

He’s never really had a huge title moment, NXT at the time was developmental so it’s not the same heights in the WWE’s eyes. He did win the Royal Rumble but that went nowhere after he developed a
fascination for hitting AJ Styles in his crown jewels.

Overall, looking at the landscape of WWE, there is currently no major top heels on RAW that could
be the next challenger for Seth but there is a multitude of babyfaces that Shinsuke could take down.
What would make it even better is Shinsuke’s persona is that of someone who will only fight on his
own terms making the other wrestlers have to earn a title shot against him to prove themselves
even more. On the flipside, it could be seen as detrimental due to Roman’s position with his titles
and how he very rarely defends it.

Secretly, I think Shinsuke should defeat Seth for one reason and that would be who knocks Shinsuke off
the top of the mountain?

‘Main Event’ Jey Uso. It gives Jey the natural rise to the top on his own as the top babyface, once Cody moves over to Smackdown, and allows him to make a name for himself away from The Bloodline. Outside of the ring, the break would allow Seth to take some time away from the ring to heal and relax, and whilst Becky is working two shows, he can be at home with Roux.

What is quite fresh to see, we’ve never seen a heel Shinsuke at the top of the card in the US. When
he was in NJPW, he was the leader of CHAOS and held the IWGP Heavyweight Championship with the villainous stable behind him. Remake that in WWE, give him a stable. He’s a fountain of knowledge
for younger competitors and gives him more exposure. It makes him feel special, fans know how
damn good he is and we’ve never been given that.