7 Ups And 10 Downs From WWE Fastlane 2019

7. How The Mighty Have Fallen

shinsuke nakamura rusev new day
WWE.com

Looking at the thrown-together tag team of Rusev and Shinsuke Nakamura, you can’t help but reach back to last year.

One year ago, Shinsuke was coming off winning the Royal Rumble and heading to WrestleMania 34 to challenge AJ Styles for the WWE Championship. Rusev was continuing to grow in popularity as the “Rusev Day” chants grew louder and he would get a shot at the United States Championship.

Flash-forward to Sunday night, and they were on the Fastlane kickoff show losing to the New Day in a competitive match that ultimately meant nothing. A thrown-together tag team of two guys who one year ago looked to be on the upswing as singles competitors are now losing a tag match on the pre-show.

There’s a moral of the story here, but it’s probably something along the lines of meeting Vince McMahon’s notions of “getting over” or face a de-push.

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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.