10 WWE Wrestlers Who Went Backwards In 2017

3. Shinsuke Nakamura

Shinsuke Nakamura
WWE.com

Before he arrived on the main roster, many members of the WWE Universe were a little worried about how Shinsuke Nakamura was going to be booked. This had been a fear from the very moment he was signed, but Nakamura’s run in NXT led to no small amount of optimism from long-time fans of the King of Strong Style.

Things didn’t look good when Nakamura was immediately placed in a feud with Dolph Ziggler. One week later his entrance video had been edited to include WWE’s generic Japanese font, and the writing seemed to be on the wall. Clean wins over John Cena and Randy Orton showed that Nakamura was a main event player on the main roster, but Shinsuke’s failure to dethrone Jinder Mahal put a serious dent in his aura.

Where does Shinsuke Nakamura stand in the WWE landscape? The former two-time NXT Champion has all the talent and charisma in the world, but he has already lost some of the magic that made him an immediate success in NXT. A WrestleMania match with Randy Orton could be on the horizon, but Swagsuke has ended 2017 as a utility player on SmackDown Live and little more.

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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.