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On August 20th, in Brooklyn, NY Shinsuke Nakamura will challenge Jinder Mahal for the WWE championship. I wish I could say I was excited but I’m not. How on Earth did we get to a point where I’m not excited about WWE championship match at “Summerslam”. When Nakamura was first rumored to be coming to WWE around January of 2016 all I herd was he was the “best wrestler in the world”,”he’s far superior than anyone in America”. So I went out did my research(YouTube)and found a number of his New Japan matches against a variety of wrestlers. Even then I pushed back on the whole best wrestler claim,but I must admit he was pretty darn good. The Nakamura I saw at that time was oozing charisma, unconventional, and very credible in the ring. He was known for Japanese strong style which essentially hitting your opponent much harder than you need to as many times as you can. Makes the sport feel more real because basically there actually hitting each other with more heavy handed strikes. I became just as excited as the next guy about his highly anticipated debut Wrestlemania weekend later that year against Sami Zayan. I plus most fans were rewarded for our patients as they delivered a match of the year candidate. The emotions of long time Nakamura fans seeing their favorite in WWE was truly exciting. The energy of that match was very special, his Japanese strong style was in full display. It’s hard to believe since that faithful night we haven’t really been that close too seeing or feeling anything like that when he’s in a ring. While his NXT run was mostly enjoyable it wasn’t memorable. The Sami match is the only one that sticks too mind after one whole year in NXT. He debut on the main roster this year shortly after Mania and a lot like his NXT debut it was pretty memorable. Since then he has had two lackluster programs with Dolph Ziggler, and Baron Corbin that hasn’t done anything but label him as just another top guy, they’re putting him in awkward promo segments making him seem like your weird Japanese friend who doesn’t speak English. Besides John Cena and a very weak build up to that match, he hasn’t been in the ring with any top notch talent. Even with all that I can’t put all the blame on WWE, yes the booking hasn’t been perfect, but hes never been pinned on television that’s a novelty. We were constantly hammered early on with several video packages about how great Nakamura is and so on. That’s great that’s a way to build up a new star who can’t speak English. The bottom line is there’s a lot of other factors at work,but the biggest and simple issue is he isn’t getting over to the level of degree people though he would. He’s extremely over too a certain group of the fanbase, thousands upon thousands, but WWE has millions of fans and too those millions he’s not connecting in a very compelling or relatable manner. All they see is a man  who comes out and engages in weird sexual dancing and some people sing too his music “big deal”. Why are we supposed to care about him, and yes that error lies mostly on WWE, but Nakamura has to do his part as well he must start to deliver much stronger matches in the ring. It’s the one thing he’s completely control of, and I think a big contributing factor too why many have cooled on him. He’s pretty much stayed away from the strong style matches, while I completely understand that mentally it’s much better for his health, but not necessarily good for his brand. Nakamura isn’t the first or last guy or girl to be booked less than ideal, but I truly believe “cream rises to the top” so Nakamura has to be given just as much too blame for the lack of excitement around his character than anyone else . My fear is that it won’t get any better from here because his next program isn’t advantageous at all.
 This leads me too his opponent Jinder Mahal the “Modern-day Maharajah” and WWE champ. One year ago he was getting ready to make his return back to the company after his release from the company just a few years earlier. There’s very brief research to do on Jinder. He’s been a jobber(loses to everyone) most of his wrestling career, he debut years ago in a fued with Great Khali that quickly  died a painful death so painful that WWE shoved him down the card so fast that he quickly became the known as the guy “oh he still wrestles for them”. Then after years of irrelevance he was thrown in a faction a wrestling band of some sorts called 3MB which was just a collection of jobbers it was a joke. Then in the blink of a second he was gone, better yet released, then upon his return last year he was right back to jobber status for about six months. Does nothing of any substance, then randomly around Mania season he’s Rusev sidekick followed by randomly being the one of the final two in “Andre The Giant” battle royal. Then the final nail in the coffin beating randomly Randy Orton for the title. Well not so random after all  WWE was planting several seeds for Jinder to become a big player in the near future, but why? 1.3 billion people that’s why, Jinder is of Indian decent and WWE is now obsessed with penetrating that market. While I’m no business expert having one of your top champions of Indian heritage possibly can help or at least that’s what the brass in WWE are hoping. The major issue is for the majority of their fans are American based and see Jinder as the jobber who’s now WWE champion. Now I’ll admit he has a good look and carry himself in a championship manner, but the program with Orton showed us so far that’s really it. He’s just somewhat robotic in the ring, and his vocals are very raspy which leads to his promos being hard to hear and very dull to put it nicely. I have no idea  if this India experiment will work, but I’m not sure honestly it’s a huge gamble in the grand scheme of things. They can always take the title off him if he starts hurts business noticeably, but from what I’m seeing and reading out there Jinder Mahal push isn’t setting the world on fire and that’s just not good.
   We’re several weeks from the show and even though this is a title match it’s not the main event I’m not sure it’s even a top 3 match right now. So they have an advantage from that stand point there not expected to carry the show or even be a huge draw. So they could truly shock people with an above average effort due to such low expectations. So I reserve the right too change my mind if new information becomes available or WWE just pulls a rabbit out its sleeve. As currently constructed you have a challenger who can’t really cut an affective English promo going against a guy who claims everyone in America hates him because he looks different. It’s not a very compelling match up in the ring or storyline I hope I’m wrong. Either way it’s the WWE title and that means something so people will be watching let’s see what they can do with it.

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