Asuka: Does SmackDown Have a Long-Term Plan for The Empress of Tomorrow?

No one has seen SmackDown Women’s Champion Asuka since the Royal Rumble, leaving many to wonder what WWE has in store for the “Empress of Tomorrow”.

Since retaining her title at the Royal Rumble, SmackDown Women’s Champion Asuka has been conspicuous by her absence. As far as the women’s division is concerned, WWE has dedicated most of the screen time over the last several weeks to build up the inevitable Ronda Rousey/Becky Lynch/Charlotte Flair triple threat match for WrestleMania, a possible intergender feud, and the impending Elimination Chamber match to christen the first ever WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions.

After her defeat of The Man at the Royal Rumble, “The Empress of Tomorrow” has not appeared on television once and aside from a short video package, the announcers haven’t mentioned her. Asuka’s sudden disappearance from the WWE canon has many fans asking “Where is Asuka?” as much as they are asking “Who is next for Asuka?”

Ostensibly, Asuka’s on-screen hiatus—she has worked dark matches and house shows during this span—speaks as much to the lack of depth in the women’s division, particularly on the SmackDown side, as it does WWE’s lack of long-term planning. All but two of the other women’s wrestlers assigned to SmackDown are in the chamber match for the tag team titles while Flair and Lynch have moved into the aforementioned program with Rousey on RAW.

But even if you afford WWE that excuse, that still doesn’t pass muster as a viable reason to keep the SmackDown Women’s Champ off of TV completely. After all, WWE could have easily booked her in some squash matches against local enhancement talent or an NXT wrestler in a one-off appearance to showcase her strikes and submissions and remind fans why she is the champion.

They could have even used the video package they produced as a prelude to the hypothetical whomping. Instead, WWE chose to do the bare minimum to alert the audience that Asuka was still on the roster and was still champion after the Rumble. If she was at the arenas for non-televised bouts, she surely could have participated in a couple of one-sided exhibitions for the viewers at home to put over her dominance.

It would be one thing if WWE had booked Asuka as the world-beater she was in NXT, but this is a woman whose character took some major dings following her loss to Flair at WrestleMania last April, particularly in her two matches with then-SmackDown Women’s Champion Carmella where the creative team made her look like the dimmest babyface on the planet en route to losing both bouts.

Even when she won the title at TLC a couple months ago, she only did so because Rousey had gripes with her two opponents. The submission win over Lynch at the Rumble helped a great deal, but WWE failed to follow up with such a big win in any way. It’s as if the match—which was fantastic, by the way—never happened.

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It’s possible that Vince McMahon and the creative team wanted to avoid making Lynch look too weak in the wake of her Royal Rumble match win (Lynch herself brushed the loss aside on the SmackDown after the Rumble). But doesn’t it also make sense to highlight Asuka’s victory over the top babyface of the women’s division, thus putting over the champion and the belt that she holds?

Most troubling of all, this break from TV also appears to signify that WWE doesn’t have big plans for Asuka heading into WrestleMania. As of Feb. 14, there doesn’t seem to be a clear opponent for her that stands out as WrestleMania-worthy.

The blame for the scarcity of viable challengers for Asuka once again falls at the feet of McMahon and the creative team. Even if you factor in the possibility that Lynch’s injury prior to Survivor Series last November changed WWE’s WrestleMania plans for both women’s title matches, the fact that nobody outside of Lynch and Flair stand out as a realistic threat to Asuka ahead of the biggest pay-per-view of the year is a problem.

Sure, they could heat up Sonya Deville for a possible match with Asuka or McMahon could follow up on his alleged desire to make Mandy Rose a star by giving her the title shot. The writers could even play off of Naomi and Asuka’s past partnership or Asuka and Nikki Cross’ battles in NXT to craft some interesting stories heading into the big show. But with how McMahon and the creative team have booked most of those ladies, they would have to put in some serious work to make fans think that any of them could go blow-for-blow Asuka in a one-on-one encounter.

There’s nothing wrong with giving a star wrestler some time off of TV to keep his/her character fresh. But WWE barely acknowledging Asuka’s existence and recent triumphs combined with an undersupply of big-name contenders for her is more indicative of the scattershot booking that has plagued her for the better part of a year.