Steve Austin Shares His Frustrations About How WWE Is Using Shinsuke Nakamura
Shinsuke Nakamura has made an impact on the main roster since joining SmackDown Live but has he been used the right way? Stone Cold Steve Austin doesn't think so and has an idea about how to fix that...
Shinsuke Nakamura debuted on the SmackDown Live roster a couple of nights after WrestleMania and while he's quickly won fans over, the King of Strong Style hasn't made the biggest of impacts on the main roster. The fact he struggled to take down Dolph Ziggler in their debut match didn't help matters and that's something which has rubbed Steve Austin up the wrong way.
Now, on the latest edition of his podcast, the WWE Legend and Hall of Famer shed some light on where he believes WWE is going wrong with Nakamura and his frustrations with how the Japanese wrestler has been used thus far.
"You bring him over and he’s going 30-minute broadways with half the damn roster. Debuted down there in WrestleMania 32, NXT, with Sami Zayn, hell of a match. Hell of a match! A lot of credit to Sami Zayn and Shinsuke, but here’s ‘The King Of Strong Style’ and all-of-a-sudden, he comes in and he’s working Dolph [Ziggler] and it took him a long time to finish off Dolph for ‘The King Of Strong Style’. Do you understand where I’m going with this gimmick? That’s booking though. What is the plan? You’ve got this guy who’s one of those talents that just don’t come around every single day. He’s special. He comes in and you treat him like he’s another Joe Blow."
That's a valid point and Austin isn't one to shy away from saying what he thinks about the current WWE product. As for how he would go about fixing this problem, Austin revealed that there's one man who could help and that's AJ Styles.
“I think Shinsuke Nakamura, we haven’t seen his best yet and I think AJ Styles may be as good of a worker as I’ve seen in years. He may be the best worker in the world right now. You felt something in the crowd at [WWE Money In The Bank] with Shinsuke Nakamura and AJ. The fans that’ve followed their career know they’ve got a great history. And they’ve, I’ve seen it, had one of the best matches I’ve ever seen with Shinsuke Nakamura and AJ.
"We haven’t seen that yet in Shinsuke, but that WrestleMania match would be a great wrestling match. I know that Styles is going to bring the best out of Shinsuke because I don’t think, from what I’ve seen, we’ve seen Shinsuke’s best in [WWE]. I’m sure he will get the best of that guy. I’m sure they’re great friends from way back or whatever the deal is. But from what I know of AJ, if Shinsuke’s going to really work his ass off, it’s going to be with Styles."
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