Former WWE Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura was revealed as Channing “Stacks” Lorenzo’s mystery opponent. Tony D’Angelo chose the opponent.
Nakamura vanished from WWE SmackDown and hasn’t been seen since August. He was in Japan last week to attend the funeral of the late Antonio Inoki.
Nakamura defeated Lorenzo with the Kinshasa.
His appearance is part of WWE’s effort to bolster the star power on tonight’s show against AEW Dynamite and is likely to give Nakamura some ring time because both Raw and SmackDown are loaded with talent and Triple H appears to be rotating stars in and out of storylines.
His most recent TV appearance was a victory over Baron Corbin on SmackDown on September 2, but he has worked dark matches and live event matches since then. At the October 7 SmackDown, Nakamura defeated Angel in a dark match.
In April 2017, Nakamura worked some NXT live event matches, but his last NXT TV match was on April 1, 2017, when he lost to then-NXT Champion Robert Roode at the “Takeover: Orlando” event.
There is no word on why Nakamura has been absent from the main roster recently, but we will keep you updated.
Click here for complete WWE NXT results. Here are highlights from Nakamura’s return:
YeeeaaaaOhhhh!!@ShinsukeN IS BACK ON #WWENXT!!!! pic.twitter.com/PmwcwNsZuB
— WWE (@WWE) October 19, 2022
.@Channing_WWE asked @ShinsukeN to "bring it"
… Well, he brought it. ?#WWENXT pic.twitter.com/VBMejKL5Yd
— WWE (@WWE) October 19, 2022
