10 WWE WrestleMania Matches That Failed To Live Up To The Hype

4. AJ Styles Vs. Shinsuke Nakamura - WrestleMania 34

AJ Styles Shinsuke Nakamura
WWE.com

It was explicitly billed as a ‘dream match’, although what that means in WWE now is anyone’s guess. Ever since AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura arrived in the company, fans had been eagerly awaiting a showdown between the two, a chance to show the mainstream what NJPW fans knew. Shinsuke Nakamura won the 2017 Royal Rumble, and the ‘dream match’ was scheduled for the Grandest Stage of Them All.

And it was just...fine. Nothing special, just a solid three-star match towards the end of the show. The two battled for 20 minutes but the somewhat laboured pace meant that the crowd was lost, and two of the most experienced wrestlers on the planet couldn’t bring them back around. Styles won clean but the match is remembered only for Nakamura’s heel turn in the aftermath. Well, that and for being disappointed.

Taking into account the quality that was their Wrestle Kingdom 10 classic, Styles vs. Nakamura in WWE was always going to be disappointing. It couldn’t live up to the hype, because the hype was built on the higher standards of the wider wrestling world. WWE’s machine is designed to disappoint when it comes to action between the ropes. Not even AJ Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura could avoid that.

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Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.