WWE NXT: Fantasy Booking Asuka’s Championship Defeat
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Step 3: A Thousand Cuts
“Cowards!!!”
Asuka isn’t happy. She’s threatening to hold the show hostage until the attacker from last week shows her face.
“You think one bad knee can stop Asuka? I dare whoever attacked me to come out and face me tonight! Here? I’m weak. See…”, she feigns limping around the ring clutching her heavily bandaged knee. After a laugh, she says, “Now is your chance whoever you are.”
William Regal arrives, but he doesn’t have the news Asuka wants to hear.
“I don’t know who it was who hit you from behind last week, but we are looking into it. I know you want to get your hands on someone but I can’t in good conscience put my injured champ in that kind of direct harm. So here’s what I will do. I will put you in a tag team match. It will be you and Liv Morgan vs. the team of Billie Kay and Peyton Royce. At least you’ll be able to get your hands on someone tonight, so that you don’t destroy everybody on our roster.”
Asuka doesn’t like it. Her smile is as terrifying as ever. Walking backstage she bumps hard into Mandy Rose. Rose looks her up and down and says, “You better watch yourself, Asuka. The Empress of Tomorrow is looking a lot like the Empress of Yesterday, lately.”
Furious, Asuka kicks Rose in the head and knocks her out. But she’s incredulous; nobody would have dared talk to her that way just two weeks ago.
Kay and Royce hit the ring for the tag match, looking more like their old, devious selves. They’re followed by Liv Morgan, who races to the apron but refuses to get in until her partner arrives. Being more cautious this time, Asuka makes her entrance. She’s cold, serious. She and Morgan barely communicate, but then the Japanese Sensation doesn’t really have friends. The match goes on with Morgan taking a pounding from her opponents while Asuka waits to be tagged in.
Finally, Morgan makes the hot tag to Asuka and she begins cleaning house. Neither Kay or Royce can handle her on their own, but they can’t take her on in together, either. Just as Asuka is about to finish them off, Morgan takes herself in. She just stands there staring at Liv, pissed off. She won’t even let Morgan get into the ring to steal her spotlight. Just then, Royce hits Asuka with a nasty chop block to her other knee. Asuka drops in agony. The bell rings, Regal waves off the match.
As Asuka is carried to the back by doctors, Morgan, Royce, and Kay watch silently.
The next few weeks are a systematic physical breakdown while exposing Asuka’s worst flaw: her inextinguishable pride. Knowing Asuka will refuse to deny any challenge because of that pride, the challengers line up for matches. Asuka defeats Royce, Kay, Mandy Rose, Thea Trinidad, Blue Pants, even a returning Carmella over the span of a few weeks. But the injuries linger. So do the attacks. Before each match her masked assailant strikes with that vicious crowbar, targeting Asuka’s knees and arms. Yet she still manages to find ways to win, albeit in less impressive fashion each time. The resolve she’s shown has won Asuka fans she didn’t know she had.