Would you consider (main roster) Shinsuke a "failure"?

As a face? Yeah. After Takeover: Dallas, Shinsuke just phoned it in until he uppercutted AJ’s bollocks.

His heel run was decent for the first few months but now he’s just...meh.

That was always Nakamura. Even in NJPW, he was mostly on autopilot. He'd only step up for the major shows, which is why I could never consider him one of the best in the world. He takes too many off days. However, he's basically given us "B Show" Shinsuke since signing. Honestly, he's only had one or two matches I'd truly consider great since coming to the US and that was against Zayn. The ones with Finn and Rusev (Fastlane) would be next in line.

I agree completely with this. While he was a big star in Japan and ROH (and even NXT), it was almost impossible for him to live up to that hype when he was moved to the main roster. But then again, he won the Royal Rumble by eliminating John Cena and Roman Reigns. He's had multiple WWE Championship matches. He's the current United States Champion. I think Nakamura's well set at the moment.

I don't know if I would go as far as to say he's a failure, but I think he's probably overrated/couldn't live up to the hype surrounding him when he came in. Personally he does nothing for me.

I mean, he pretty much is in the same position as he was in New Japan, that high mid card/ main event when we need him guy that he was in new japan. He was being pushed down the card at the time he left and couldn’t do the style of matches there. He needed a lighter load and he got that in wwe. Was on top in Nxt for a year, sold a crap ton of merch, won the rumble, main evented mania, and now he is a fringe top guy on smackdown. It sounds like he did just fine and probably better than expected if we are being honest with ourselves.

Yes, but what else could he do? I admit I never have and still don't see the appeal, but he was doomed by his inability to speak English. That's not on him so much as it's on the writers. The exact same thing happened with Asuka. As soon as her undefeated streak was over she disappeared, went to Smackdown, then started losing...to Billie and Payton even.

Nakamura is doing ok, sure, but this is as good as it's ever going to get for the biggest star in Japan. This is the company that pushed Becky down because they didn't like her brogue. Thankfully she's killing it now but at least she speaks English fluently as opposed to conversationally. Its not about the ring work in WWE unfortunately (although I'm not a fan of Nakamuras anyway).

He had that one great debut match vs Zayn, but after that he showed me nothing. I felt all the hype he gets was for his entrance but other than the first match everything he does in the ring seems subpar.