Shinsuke Nakamura Is On His Way To SummerSlam After Dropping John Cena On His Neck Last Night
Hey folks! Smackdown was pretty damn good last night and featured two matchups that created SummerSlam matches, so it had huge consequences! I got to watch it in the office with Jared Carrabis and immediately hop into the podcast room afterwards which was really cool, because every other podcast but ours was able to do that and I think it’s something that gets taken for granted too often. This week we were able to get our immediate raw (SmackDown) thoughts and then go mix it up with Phishheads outside the Garden (video this week). Check out the podcast HERE. Rone, Kevin Condron, and Scorpio Sky join us. For now, let’s talk SmackDown.
AJ Styles vs Kevin Owens for the WWE United States Championship opened up the show, and it was a really enjoyable match. I think I liked it better than their pay per view encounters, and just as much as the house show match at MSG. The finish was the ref taking a bump, leaving him too disoriented to see Kevin Owens got his shoulder up before striking his hand onto the canvas for a three count. Afterwards, this happened…
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So basically, Shane has probably been the slated ref for SummerSlam since before Battleground, but that finish was all fucked up. So they had to redo the whole thing last night to get to this point. It adds SOME intrigue to the match, but not a ton. I’d much rather see Shane wrestle Kevin Owens, AJ wrestle Nakamura, and Cena wrestle Jinder.
Chad Gable wrestled a fantastic match against Rusev that was short but everything it needed to be. He’s definitely the Shawn of American Alpha, and it’s a shame to see how little is being put into him as opposed to Jason Jordan. Randy Orton then came out and RKO’d Rusev, creating the most uninspired feud of all time that nobody is excited for that is probably going to take up too much time on SummerSlam.
The highlight of the night was obviously John Cena vs Shinsuke Nakamura, a personal dream match of mine, and while I wasn’t BLOWN AWAY, I’d say it didn’t disappoint. Cena is just so damn good, he can really get the best out of anyone. Nakamura got the best out of Cena too, meaning he dropped him right on his fucking head…
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Ouch. He appeared to be fine afterwards, but it could’ve been real scary. Carrabis and I spoke about how there’s nobody you could put opposite Jinder in Brooklyn next month the crowd wouldn’t just turn on, and you know what? I think they found the guy. I think the crowd will be so amped up for a potential Shinsuke Nakamura WWE Championship run they might actually yay/boo.
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