Asuka: Where Did It All Go Wrong?
This context is crucial when determining Asuka’s role in all of this.
You’ll have noticed by now that this editorial on Asuka hasn’t paid much mind to Asuka. That is because, when reviewing her achievements in determining what went wrong, her achievements are immaterial to the argument. It’s hardly as if she regressed as a performer, or that fans didn’t respond to her in-ring exploits. The crowd popped huge when she won the—sigh—first-ever Women’s Royal Rumble match. Asuka's verbal segments were often very awkward—why is this written in the past tense, when she debuted in October 2017?—but that was an indictment of WWE’s presentation of the character, not her performance of it.
Asuka is ruined because WWE is not a meritocracy; it remains, despite the contrary PR overdrive, a beauty pageant.
As pointed out by Twitter user @those-turtles, which remains true at time of writing, WWE has not promoted a main roster pay-per-view Women’s Championship match in which a blonde wasn’t featured since October 2014. As they wrote, “Vince has a type”, and since Jim Ross in the early 2000s had to make him aware of the existence of Asian pornography to assist his pitch to hire Gail Kim, that type is not Japanese women. This is the culture facing Asuka. Vince McMahon remains in charge, and the legendarily misogynistic Kevin Dunn remains in his ear.
Asuka herself did not materialise the shift in WWE’s treatment of women’s wrestling. It doesn’t matter that Asuka is so wonderful at what she does.
Asuka entered a complete performance against Ember Moon at TakeOver: Brooklyn III. She gradually transitioned into something of a tweener role, while at the same time building Ember Moon as the most fierce threat yet to the NXT Women’s Championship she elevated to a position of immense prestige. The match escalated and escalated in drama. There was no flab to it. Everything mattered. It was a masterpiece.
And yet, per the precedent of objective data, you are not likely to see a revisit of this all-time WWE classic match, irrespective of gender, in a featured position on PPV.
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