clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Shinsuke Nakamura will eventually get to pin Dolph Ziggler and we can’t wait

Wednesday’s Rude Awakening looks at the baby steps of the Ziggler/Nakamura feud, a landmark retro episode of NXT, and rumors about who WWE could bring in for the women’s tourney.

Shinsuke Nakamura WWE Network

We publish a whole lot of content here at Cageside Seats. We’re also [looks around and whispers so the bosses can’t hear] not the only place producing wrestling content on the internet. So, as a service to you on the weekdays, we’ll be producing a wrestling newsletter, "Rude Awakening." Well, it will be a newsletter eventually: for now, it’ll just be part of your experience here at Cageside, collecting the news, recaps, and social moments from the greater wrestling universe daily so you won’t fall behind, with a newsletter format to come.

* * *

Watching Dolph Ziggler get punched/kicked/dropped/harmed in any way is a good time. That’s why he’s out here starting problems with Shinsuke Nakamura, pretending he doesn’t know who he is or what he’s about: so that we all get super annoyed with him and want to see him kneed in the noggin before the King of Strong Style pins him 1-2-3. It’s been great, mostly, but even Ziggler’s missteps — comparing him to Michael Jackson a week ago, now kind of pretending that he’s like Prince or something? — have worked out. And that’s because they end up giving us the same general reaction in the end, which is, “I can’t wait until Shinsuke Nakamura wrestles this dude and wrecks him.”

This is so much better than Ziggler’s previous attempt at being a heel, where he would take an entire segment to breathe a sentence into his mic while permanently stuck in the “maaaaaaan” portion of Chris Jericho’s vocal stylings. And Nakamura isn’t going to just drop Ziggler and be done with him, either: Dolph is going to fight this out, give the part of the audience that doesn’t know Nak’s work an extended look, and make those who do know what Nakamura is capable of what they’ve been waiting for.

There’s also potential to let this feud go for more than just Backlash, too. With Money in the Bank next up for SmackDown on the calendar following May’s event, Nakamura and Ziggler could both conceivably be in the titular ladder match fighting for the briefcase with the WWE World Championship contract within. Neither has to win, but Ziggler being the reason Nakamura doesn’t climb the ladder would help give this feud that extra edge it needs — and give Nakamura his excuse to really let loose on the Showoff later in the summer.

Sign up for the newsletter Sign up for the Cageside Seats Daily Roundup newsletter!

A daily roundup of all your pro wrestling news from Cageside Seats