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For the last several weeks, Shinsuke Nakamura has been releasing vignettes about his return to action on the SmackDown brand in WWE. Last week, his latest vignette explained he has a new tag team partner.
And now, it has become more obvious who it will be.
On August 7th, Nakamura finally resurfaced on SmackDown after a long absence in a backstage vignette declaring that “war was coming” for the new WWE Tag Team Champions, The MFTs of Tama Tonga & Talla Tonga, and revealed that he wouldn’t be coming alone. On the latest August 14th edition of Smackdown, he appeared in another promo vignette directly calling out the MFTs and explicitly stated that his new ally is chaos, deadly, and a “ticking time bomb”, heavily leaning into a shadowy silhouette that some wrestling fans recognized as a former New Japan Pro Wrestling star.
While not officially confirmed yet by the WWE, it was pretty obvious from the vignette, and the last tag line, that Nakamura’s tag team partner will be Hiromu Takahashi, the “ticking time bomb”, who left NJPW in February earlier this year to join WWE.
The latest vignette from Nakamura is HERE on WWE’s YouTube channel:
“MFTs. Congratulations. You are now the champions. Are you savoring the feeling knowing it will be gone soon? Was the victory as sweet, knowing what’s coming next? Me. My partner. Your destruction. My partner is what you all pretend to be. Experienced. Vicious. Deadly. He is chaos. He is a ticking time bomb.
Take cover.”
In the latest edition of Fightful Select Answers by Sean Ross Sapp, he confirmed that Takahashi has, indeed, been signed with WWE for some time. Some sources in Fightful Select say it was as early as May of this year. Takahashi is planning to start teaming with Nakamura on the SmackDown brand soon instead of going through NXT first. And, at 46 years old, Nakamura’s work would be better suited in a team helping Takahashi get acclimated to being in WWE and the United States.
If Nakamura and Takahashi do end up forming a tag team on the SmackDown brand and go after the newly redesigned and crowned Tag Team Champions of the MFTs, this could finally give the male tag team division in the WWE a spark it’s needed for some time.
Take cover.
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