WWE Money in the Bank 2018 review: What we learned, takeaways, future projections
By Luke Norris
Last Man Standing Match for the WWE Championship
AJ Styles (c) vs. Shinsuke Nakamura
What we learned: We learned here that apparently no matter what pay-per-view they’re on, AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura aren’t going to be the main event, and that’s an absolute travesty. And please don’t give me something like “the pay-per-view is called Money in the Bank so it needs to end with one of those matches” type of thing. How many times has Survivor Series ended without one of those matches or the Royal Rumble ended without the Royal Rumble match? This just seems a bit disrespectful, especially since AJ Styles is as popular as anyone in WWE right now and has been a great champion.
As for the match itself, I think this may have been the best one we’ve seen Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura have in WWE. I will say that Last Man Standing can get a bit slow at times (come on, there’s no need to start a count after a dropkick two minutes into the match) due to the counts, but for the most part, things flowed pretty well. Both men got plenty of offense in and things got very physical on both sides with Styles selling the punishment from Shinsuke so very well.
While the match as a whole was very good, the finish was … wait for it … phenomenal. After half an hour of back and forth, inside the ring and out, Nakamura did his “COME ON” thing and Styles gave him a hard kick to the groin and the look on both of their faces was priceless. AJ climbed the ropes and hit the Phenomenal Forearm that sent Shinsuke crashing through the announce table. Cue the 10-count and this one was over. Fantastic.
What’s next: This should put an end to this program. I originally thought that Shinsuke might win the title here to keep this going through the summer, but it seems like it’s been long enough. This was the fourth consecutive pay-per-view match for these two and it is time to move on. The loss will send Nakamura back down the card a little bit, but AJ Styles will now need a new number one contender for his WWE Championship, and I really want to believe that Samoa Joe is next in line. We got a tease a while back and it may be time to start heading in that direction.