10 Most Creative Wrestlers On The Planet Right Now
6. Asuka
Asuka is incredible at filling the soulless void that is empty arena wrestling, and her towering achievement becomes all the more impressive when one realises that WWE has elsewhere refused to alter its formula and tropes, the stubborn adherence to which ruthlessly underscores the creative bankruptcy.
Asuka transcends it with her sensory assault on the audience.
She knows how hollow and weird this is and refuses to let its bleakness register. Her attire is iconic and ostentatious in an era in which her peers can barely stick to a single colour scheme. Her guttural, hyper trash-talk compensates, with its crazed, oscillating cadence, for the lack of atmosphere. She had the nous early in this process to adapt her poses and celebrations, flitting madly from one side of the screen to the other with a demented, charming jig. There is no echo to a better yesterday, no reminder of the absent fans: Asuka's utterly arresting charisma dominates every pixel of screen.
She is a firework who works snug as hell, charged with the most blessed and dangerous of energies to burst through the thick, stubborn sheen of WWE TV.