King of Swerve Style: 5 Reasons Why Shinsuke Nakamura's Heel Turn is a Great Idea

#1 Nakamura was stagnating as a babyface

A promising moment that, sadly, hasn't led to bigger successes with WWE

It's a sad, but true, realisation that, in many ways, Nakamura has not lived up to the promise he showed in his stellar debut.

Part of that stems from the novelty of his first NXT match with Zayn in Dallas, but part of that also stems from the fact that Nakamura was very limited in a good guy role.

The Artist's trademark Strong Style might be commonplace in Japan but, in mainstream American wrestling, that hard-hitting brutal style is fairly less common.

NXT fans lapped up Nakamura's showcase of hard, fast strikes in 2016, but since then the Japanese megastar seems to have been throttled in his intensity by WWE creative.

This is especially true for his main roster run so far, as his pay-per-view debut against Dolph Ziggler was a fizzle of a match that saw Nakamura playing the underdog and toning down the brutality.

And he did this so that he could fit into the model of a WWE babyface; NXT crowds tend to cheer entertaining work regardless of character.

But the more mainstream crowds who only watch RAW and SmackDown tend to see a punishing attack like Nakamura's as a "bad guy" way to wrestle.

Whether WWE put a capper on Nakamura's Strong Style, or whether The Artist just wasn't giving his all because his heart wasn't truly in his babyface run, the character had languished in a lot of respects throughout 2016.

The coolness of his entrance couldn't make up for the fact that, as a face, he had to look weak for guys like Ziggler or Mahal; a heel turn, hopefully, breathes new life and new intensity into a character very much in danger of going main roster bust.