10 Ups And 12 Downs From WWE WrestleMania 34

11. ‘Dream Match’ Falls Short

shinsuke nakamura aj styles
WWE.com

The danger of calling something a “dream match” is that it suddenly has to live up to all the hype. If it does, then people feel relieved that it delivered. If not, people wonder what the hell happened.

AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura had a solid, competitive match for the WWE Championship Sunday, but it was nowhere near the instant classic it was built up to be. The match was good, but never really clicked or fired on all cylinders.

Look at Johnny Gargano’s last two TakeOver matches for examples of contests that hit all the right notes. Hell, look at Charlotte Flair versus Asuka for a match on the 'Mania card that connected better.

Hopefully, with Nakamura turning heel afterward, the two will have a rematch that will live up to the expectations people had for a confrontation between them.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.