10 Reasons Shinsuke Nakamura's WWE Run Will Fail
9. The NXT Move
Should Shinsuke Nakamura unsuccessfully transition to WWE's main roster, he'd be sidled amongst the sort of performers that would make a dream roster for a start-up promotion.
Alongside potentially great but underdeveloped talents like Apollo Crews, The Vaudevillians, Adam Rose and Emma (and until very recently, Tyler Breeze), the company has even dropped the ball with one of the biggest breakout stars ever in Bayley. 'The Hugger' was everything to everybody in NXT, a universally beloved and believable babyface that has been contorted and distorted by Vince McMahon's fatal misunderstanding of what made her so popular to begin with.
Particularly in the case of those performers that shone in the brand's 2014-2016 white hot period, the leap from the developmental brand to the big stage came with compromise and intricately careful development. Few have thrived without faltering at some point, with even best case scenarios such as Kevin Owens and Charlotte Flair suffering their fair share of creative abuse in between hugely satisfying runs.
A reboot or hard reset is only ever an episode of Monday Night Raw or SmackDown Live! away, but Nakamura may not be the type of performer to weather such an awkward shift. He needs to make his first chance count more than most.