YMMV / Shinsuke Nakamura

• Arc Fatigue: His highly anticipated feud with AJ Styles in 2018. After months of justified anticipation following Nakamura winning the Royal Rumble, their WrestleMania 34 match was a bit of a letdown. Their following matches after his Face–Heel Turn at the Greatest Royal Rumble and the no-DQ match at Backlash 2018, both ending in double KO, and their constant back-and-forth over the title in Smackdown Live (including the "whoever wins the match decides the stipulation" match in an episode) didn't do them any favors. The feud was finally put to rest with the Last Man Standing match at Money in the Bank 2018.
• Awesome Music:
  • His longtime theme in New Japan Pro-Wrestling, "Subconscious" by Julia Claris, has consistently been one of the most popular themes in all of professional wrestling for over a decade.
  • His new WWE theme, "The Rising Sun", instantly caught fire as well. Even fans who are generally critical of CFO$ or would rather WWE had worked out a way for him to keep using "Subconscious" can admit the music would at least be good enough for a Chaos stable theme. The rest quickly declared it their new favorite theme music as it shot up to #1 on the iTunes soundtrack charts within 24 hours of its release and became the first track to hit over one million^note then two million, then three million, then four million, then five million, so on and so forth to over FORTY EIGHT MILLION views on WWE's theme music channel. It's gotten to the point where the NXT faithful and even Nakamura's home crowd at Sumo Hall sing along to it.
  • At NXT Takeover Brooklyn II, violinist Lee England Jr. played him out live. The live entrance is at WWE's official YouTube page here and the studio version on WWE Music's official page here. This version was also performed during Nakumura's SmackDown Live and SummerSlam debut.
  • And now with his post-WM34 Face–Heel Turn he gained a more intense version called "Shadows of the Setting Sun". More guitars and Japanese rapping to a redux of "The Rising Sun", oozing awesome all the way through.
• Badass Decay: Has gone from a potential main eventer to basically a henchman for Sami Zayn and then later, just a tag team partner for Cesaro. As of 2021 though this has reversed, as he split his team with Cesaro, turned face and has been booked much better.
• Broken Base: Just everything about his late WWE tenure, especially the dream matches that could have been and never were. Some people are unable to forgive Nakamura and the bookers for turning a top wrestler in NJPW and NXT into a lazy entertainer who dropped from the main event scene in less of a year and had underwhelming matches with people it was considered a crime to have bad matches with (like Styles). Others believe there is nothing wrong on Nakamura getting easy money for surfing in the States and working a much more comfortable rate after his grueling career in Japan.
• Designated Hero:
  • Nakamura's anticipated match with Naoya Ogawa in 2004 was suspended when Naka hinted he had planned to shoot on Ogawa (in revenge for a similar attack by Ogawa on Shinya Hashimoto years before), after which an angry Antonio Inoki put Kazuyuki Fujita to legitimately brutalize Shinsuke in a stiff tag team match to punish him. For many people, however, poor Naka was in the right about wanting to shoot on Ogawa and should have got everything his way, overlooking not only that Nakamura would be committing exactly the same crime he was wanting to get revenge for (which is the most unprofessional action imaginable in pro wrestling), but also that his revenge goals were pointless in the first place because Hashimoto had forgiven and befriended Ogawa after their own incident (in fact, Ogawa and Hashimoto were a tag team at the time the Festival happened).
  • Peple have also justified that Nakamura's threats against Ogawa might have been meant to be just a warning not to try and repeat the Hashimoto attack with him, which also falls flat, as Ogawa had ceased working under Inoki years before, had straightened his work rate and had no conceivable reason to crash his match with Naka (the bout was a great chance for both wrestlers and their respective promotions, in fact). Even if Inoki really intended to override Ogawa into shooting on Nakamura for some reason, once he had to change the match he would find another of his loyalists to get that done anyway, and if he didn't, all Nakamura did was draw Inoki's ire and turn it into a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy when Inoki reached for Fujita.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Being the youngest IWGP Heavyweight Champion didn't stop Shinsuke from becoming this later on during Chaos stablemate Kazuchika Okada's super-push. The fans took to Okada well enough, but still preferred Nakamura and Hiroshi Tanahashi to Okada—or at least to him and Tetsuya Naito, since they voted Nakamura vs. Tanahashi's Intercontinental Championship match ahead of Okada's IWGP Heavyweight Title defense against Naito as the main event of Wrestle Kingdom 8.
  • Was super highly anticipated heading into his NXT debut at Takeover: Dallas to the point that the opening riff of a brand new music track was enough to get the entire crowd roaring off its feet before the man ever officially debuted on a WWE stage, and after the instant classic of a match that ensued with Sami Zayn, the hype is only getting stronger.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The "Peenshasa", or the "King of Low Blow Style", in response to Nakamura's tendency circa 2018 to hit his opponents with low blows. Ironically, this was first suggested by EC3, before the fans went along with it.
  • Thanks to an oddly placed Snickers logo, fans have taken to calling him "Shinsuke 'Snickers' Nakamura." Lampshaded by Nakamura himself, too.
• Memetic Badass: He will steal your thunder and drive his knee into your skull. His spit alone can grant you Macho Man's charisma. His name is Japanese for "Come At Me Bro!".
• Narm: Nakamura's signature body poses and herky jerky mannerisms. While they have become an indissociable aspect of his gimmick, they basically make him look like he is having a seizure while on LSD.
  • Narm Charm: For some however, Shinsuke's eccentric movements are part of his charm.
• Shocking Moments:
  • Beating John Cena clean on the August 1, 2017, edition of WWE SmackDown to become No. 1 Contender for the WWE Championship at Summerslam. Then beating Randy Orton, also clean, a month after. Yes, both wins happened.
  • During the Orton match, he was so hell-bent on not eating an RKO that he got out of it 3 times, with one time countering it into a cross armbreaker.
  • Winning Royal Rumble 2018 by beating Cena a second time, then hurling Roman Reigns out of the ring for the victory, to the tune of a pop loud enough to rival the heyday of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. As of February 2018, Shinsuke has roundly beaten three of the company's top modern stars and is set to go after the fourth.

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