6 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE Payback 2023 (Results & Review)

3. Looking Like A Real Threat

For a good chunk of the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, Shinsuke Nakamura looked like he was going to walk out of Pittsburgh with the title.

That’s how good of a job the build did to convince that Seth Rollins could lose his title Saturday due to his injured back. Nakamura targeted it repeatedly throughout the bout, looking more motivated than he had in a long time. (Main-eventing your first WWE PLE will do that to you.)

Rollins played the champ-in-peril well, relying on grit, guile and fighting spirit to overcome Shinsuke, finally taking advantage of his opponent’s positioning to deliver an opportunistic stomp for the win.

But give a lot of credit to the story they told in the lead-up to Payback, and to Nakamura, who finally looked like the world title-caliber wrestler everyone said he was when he signed with WWE all those years ago.

They probably could have belted him Saturday and it might have actually worked. The question now is whether Shinsuke will get another shot at the title or if this was a one-and-done.