Fantasy Booking Asuka’s Main Roster Debut
After suffering a broken collarbone at NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn III, Asuka was forced to surrender her Women’s Championship. It has since been announced that she will become a part of the Raw roster, and WWE fans are salivating over her upcoming debut.
To say that Asuka’s time in NXT was a success would be an understatement of epic proportions. When you consider in-ring talent, character direction and fan approval, she was the biggest star in the organization, male or female.
Before breaking her collarbone and being forced to relinquish her title, she could do no wrong and neither could the NXT writers. In creating her character arc and writing her story, they seemed to perfectly hit each and every note.
She was destructive during her run to the top and undefeated once she got there. The intrigue lied in the question of who would dethrone The Empress of Tomorrow, but unlike past champions who were bound for the main roster (Sami Zayn, Shinsuke Nakamura and Bobby Roode to name a few), no one ever could.
Every time a possible contender took her to the limit, Asuka answered the challenge and fulfilled the role of being an unstoppable champion. Some fans even considered the possibility of her showing up on WWE television with the NXT title still around her waist.
Now that her NXT run has officially come to an end, WWE has already begun hyping her Raw debut.
In the wake of Asuka’s impending call-up, one must wonder how WWE will choose to book her on the main roster.
One of the great luxuries afforded to wrestling fans is the privilege of being optimistic. Since WWE TV is scripted week-to-week, we get to fantasy book possible narratives for our favourite stars.
Oscar Wilde wrote that “the very basis of optimism is sheer terror”, something wrestling fans can relate to all too well. That feeling of excitement is fleeting, since the actual outcome very rarely lives up to our dream scenarios and expectations.
So let’s do ourselves a favour and not complicate things.
Truthfully, the secret to fantasy booking Asuka’s main roster debut is that there is no secret. It’s already been discovered.
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What worked for Asuka in NXT is the same as what will work for her on Raw: she had a killer character, incredible wrestling ability and a vicious undefeated streak. We’ve seen it and it works.
If Charlotte is the Brock Lesnar of the women’s division, Asuka should be its Undertaker.
She possesses an almost supernatural aura and should be presented as such; an inexplicably unbeatable force. As she likes to say, “Nobody is ready for Asuka”.
She should quickly ascend to the apex of the division, going through the likes of Mickie James, Emma and Dana Brooke and take out Nia Jax on her way to defeating the champion and taking possession of the title. From that point forward, whenever we feel like Asuka’s next challenger will be her last, she proves us wrong and takes them down.
The script has already been written. No need to get fancy, no need to step outside the lines. Asuka is Asuka.
Some may feel that this copy and paste approach is lacking in creativity and originality, but the truth is that the surface hasn’t even been scratched yet.
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Asuka’s time in NXT was cut short and as a result, her main roster debut allows a unique opportunity for continuity, rather than a new beginning.