According to WrestlingStandard.com, WWE called an audible and decided to end the AJ Styles/Shinsuke Nakamura feud early, as original plans called for the rivalry to continue beyond Money in the Bank.
Once Nakamura lost to Styles, he was then inserted into a U.S. Title feud with Jeff Hardy.
The report states that Andrade “Cien” Almas was originally set to face Hardy in the United States Title program, however WWE made the call to go with Nakamura instead.
Vince McMahon is reportedly still very high on the idea of a foreign heel United States Champion despite the fact that its 2018 and xenophobia rarely exists in the country, “[Vince] loves a foreign heel as US Champion”, noted a source, “it was going to be Cien but it’ll [now]probably be Nakamura”.
As noted previously, the reasoning behind AJ Styles retaining the WWE Title in his feud against Nakamura was due largely on Styles landing the cover of WWE 2K19. Original plans did call for Nakamura to hold the title for a brief amount of time before dropping it back to Styles.