4 Ups And 6 Downs From WWE Backlash 2017

by Scott Carlson

1. Nakamura Introduces Himself

Shinsuke Nakamura Dolph Ziggler
WWE.com

Shinsuke Nakamura at 50% is still better than about half of the roster, so it’s safe to call his SmackDown debut match Sunday night a modest success.

Nakamura battled Dolph Ziggler in what was a slower-than-expected match, with Dolph controlling with some basic stuff early on and Shinsuke coming back with kicks and knee strikes. Things picked up at the midpoint, with Dolph hitting a massive DDT for 2 and the two trading some high-impact moves.

Ziggler made a fatal mistake by spitting in Nakamura’s face, leading the King of Strong Style to decimate him with knees and then hit a reverse Exploder suplex and Kinshasa for the win. While the match wasn’t anything like his NXT debut against Sami Zayn, Shinsuke gave casual fans enough of a sampling to let them know what he’s capable of.

Here’s hoping however that Nakamura will get a chance to go full tilt sometimes in the near future, because Nakamura at 50% will get old after a while.

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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.