WWE News: Dolph Ziggler stops match, gets fans to sing "Happy Birthday" for Shinsuke Nakamura
What’s the story?
Dolph Ziggler recently competed against Shinsuke Nakamura at a SmackDown house show.
Apparently, Ziggler stopped their midway through their match, so as to sing “Happy Birthday” to the birthday boy Shinsuke Nakamura.
In case you didn’t know…
Born on February 24th, 1980, Shinsuke Nakamura is widely regarded as one of the best professional wrestlers in the world today.
Nakamura is beloved by both fans & critics alike, and enjoys a huge fan-following in the West, despite having wrestled for the majority of his career on the Japanese pro-wrestling circuit.
The heart of the matter
After making his main roster debut on SmackDown Live last year, Dolph Ziggler has served as one of Shinsuke Nakamura’s key rivals. In fact, at SmackDown’s recent house show in Denver, Colorado, on February 24th, 2018, Ziggler and Nakamura once again went toe-to-toe with one another.
Regardless, despite the long-running rivalry between the duo, Ziggler stopped the match midway, and offered Nakamura a handshake, only to withdraw his hand at the last moment and taunt Nakamura.
During one of the later segments in the match, Ziggler urged the fans in attendance to join him and sing “Happy Birthday” to Nakamura. Fans can watch the endearing video below—
What’s next?
Dolph Ziggler is set to compete in a Fatal 5-Way Match against Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Baron Corbin and WWE Champion AJ Styles with the latter’s title on the line, at the Fastlane PPV on March 11th.
On the other hand, the vast majority of professional wrestling experts believe that Shinsuke Nakamura is set to receive a huge main-event push this year.
Author’s take
It’s awesome to see Dolph Ziggler’s wittiness and ring-psychology, as ‘The Showoff’ just seems to be well-aware with the pulse of the WWE Universe.
From the looks of it, the crowd was highly-entertained by Ziggler’s gesture, and Shinsuke Nakamura himself seemed caught off-guard by the former.
WWE house shows have always been a thing of beauty, as the performers have the liberty of bending the rules at the events since they aren’t under the pressure to perform in a certain way to appease the television audience.