Opinion: AJ Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura needs to main event WrestleMania
''The winner of the Royal Rumble will challenge the WWE Champion in the main event of WrestleMania!''
Well, at least that is how it used to be. Shinsuke Nakamura won the 2018 Royal Rumble match and immediately set his eyes on WWE Champion AJ Styles for WrestleMania. Styles isn't finished defending his WWE Championship just yet as he will put it on the line in 2 weeks time at Fastlane against Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Baron Corbin and Dolph Ziggler, but the Phenomenal one is expected to come out on top.
So it is still almost a guarantee that we will see AJ Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania, just not in the main event.
Styles and Nakamura in the Main Event seems like a logical choice, both are extremely popular and will deliver an excellent match, while although Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns are more than capable of a good match, the Elimination Chamber winner will be booed by the majority of the building once more.
I just don't get it. WrestleMania 32 had more than 100,000 fans in attendance with about 90% of the building against Roman. This was known ahead of time and WWE still kept his match with Triple H as the main event, which was booed heavily and ended WWE' biggest ever Pay-Per-View with about 90,000 people booing as it left the airwaves.
Now you could think, maybe WWE has learned their lesson, maybe Styles and Nakamura will headline, while Roman and Brock will collide earlier on the show, getting the live audience's distaste out of the way, but it won't happen.
One of the big reasons why, in my opinion, is because although Styles and Nakamura are both big WWE stars today, AJ Styles is still best remembered as 'Mr. TNA', while Nakamura is still best remembered for his work in Japan. Brock Lesnar made it in WWE long before UFC so is still seen as a WWE guy, while Roman is a WWE pet project and handpicked future face of the company.
Vince McMahon will not have two Superstars who made their name elsewhere take the top spot over two of his boys. You also have to take into account that WWE has never learned from past Roman Reigns negative reaction experiences and believe that Reigns will be cheered.
They believe Reigns will elect a huge pop from the live audience when he becomes the first superstar to kick out of the F-5 in 3 years and they believe we will cheer when he stands tall over a defeated Lesnar at the end of the night. It is a nice dream WWE has but it will only ever be just that.
I like Roman Reigns and I am looking forward to his match with Brock Lesnar, but like most others I believe AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura will deliver a more compelling match and thus, as the former tradition was, I think that AJ Styles and the Royal Rumble winning Shinsuke Nakamura need to be the main event, if anything, to at least end the show on a high note.