5 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE Elimination Chamber 2021

3. No Love For Asuka

Asuka WWE
WWE.com

If you really needed to see what WWE thinks of Asuka, look no further than their handling of her canceled Raw Women’s Championship match.

Asuka had been set to face Lacey Evans at Elimination Chamber, but a real-life pregnancy scuttled that bout. That left the match in doubt, and nothing was ever announced as a replacement. Most fans assumed they would just tap Evans’ tag team partner Peyton Royce to fill the slot, which would give us a decent match, and even let them continue the rivalry if they so desired.

But even with a full week to prepare for this situation, we got… nothing. Nada. On a PPV that ran about 2.5 hours, they couldn’t throw out a 10-minute title defense for a woman who basically carried Raw during the early stages of the Empty Arena Era.

For the record, Asuka has defended her title on PPV since winning it six months ago exactly once. Meanwhile, they managed to hold a fatal four-way match to tap a new opponent to insert in a United States Championship triple threat that was announced on Sunday.

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.