The dream match almost everyone wanted to see at WrestleMania 34 was set at the Royal Rumble, when Shinsuke Nakamura won the Rumble and declared his intention to face WWE Champion AJ Styles in New Orleans. That match finally happened on Sunday night — and it was everything fans dreamed of and then some.
WrestleMania results 2018: AJ Styles wins the dream, but Nakamura has the last laugh
AJ Styles retained the WWE Championship, but he probably doesn’t feel like a winner after what Shinsuke Nakamura put him through after the match.
The two have clashed before, but not in a WWE singles match. Their last one-on-one battle came in Japan’s NJPW in a match that can only be described as a war for the IWJP Intercontinental Championship, less than one month before AJ arrived at the 2016 Royal Rumble, and just two months before Nakamura showed up in NXT. Since then, both men have won multiple titles and numerous accolades, and the anticipation for this round of their years-long feud has built to sky-high levels.
Styles kep Nakamura grounded for much of the early stages of the match, avoiding the worst of his strikes and doing some damage to the left leg typically favored by Nakamura to deliver the devastating knee strikes that are his trademark. But a Calf Crusher was countered into a triangle choke from Nakamura, and while Styles eventually got out of it and took control of the match again, you could tell that the submission had taken a lot out of him.
Back and forth they went, with Nakamura trying to work around his damaged knee, and kicking out of a Phenomenal Forearm before beautifully countering a springboard 450 splash. A long and stiff exchange of strikes saw Nakamura come out on top, recovering from a Pele kick to his ear by rocking the back of Styles’ neck with a knee strike. Nakamura seemed to be loading up for a Kinshasa knee strike, but Styles was ready with a counter.
Now, in WWE Styles’ main finisher has been the Phenomenal Forearm. But that didn’t work earlier in the match, and so Styles reached deeper into his near-bottomless bag of tricks to his old reliable Styles Clash. His old trademark finisher is something he hasn’t used much in WWE, but he was able to lock in the hold needed and dropped Nakamura hard. The referee counted to three, and not only had Styles retained his beloved WWE Championship, he redeemed his loss to Nakamura in NJPW three years ago.
Unlike three years ago, though, the show of respect between the two didn’t last. Nakamura made a show of presenting the WWE Championship to Styles — only to use the moment as an opportunity to land a crippling low blow to his old rival, which set off an extended beatdown that ended in a vicious Kinshasa outside the ring.
What comes next? Who knows. But now that Shinsuke Nakamura is feelin like being a part of the darker side of wrestling, anything is possible.
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