If Asuka Retired...WWE Won’t Be the Same

For years, Asuka wasn’t just one of the best women’s wrestlers in WWE — she was one of the best performers in the entire company. In this video, I look back at the legendary career of The Empress of Tomorrow, from her historic undefeated streak in NXT to becoming one of the most unique and unforgettable stars WWE has ever had.

We talk about her dominance in NXT, her Royal Rumble victory, and the controversial ending to WrestleMania 34 against Charlotte Flair — a match many fans still believe Asuka should have won. I also dive into the brilliance of the Kabuki Warriors era, her incredible character work, the evolution of her face paint and mist, and why her attention to detail made her feel completely different from everyone else on the roster.

I also discuss how Asuka became one of the biggest bright spots during WWE’s pandemic era. At a time when wrestling felt strange and uncertain, her charisma, energy, and creativity helped carry entire shows. Whether she was dancing, screaming on commentary, or putting on incredible matches, she made empty arena wrestling feel alive.

Finally, I talk about her recent match against Iyo Sky, the emotions surrounding it, and the growing speculation that this could be the end — whether that means leaving WWE, retiring, or simply closing one chapter of an unforgettable career.

Thank you, Asuka. No matter what happens next, your legacy is already legendary.

#WWE #Asuka #WWERaw #Wrestling #IyoSky
For business related inquiries contact me at: 
wrestlechop@outlook.com

--

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Oh, goodbye.

unknown 0:01

See you later.

SPEAKER_01 0:03

See you later. Don't attack her. Don't leave us! Oh no. She's gone. She's gone, gone. Asuka has left the building. I'm not sure she's retired after her match at Backlash against EOSky or if she's just on a sabbatical handling family business in Japan, whatever the case may be. I wanted to do a video just appreciating the legend that is the Empress of Tomorrow. Asuka. She's been in WWE for a minute now, and boy, the time has flown, and these are some of my favorite moments. Can't do an Asuka video without talking about her legendary NXT black and gold run.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Who can beat Asuka? Hoops run through everyone.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

She was the definition of final boss back in the day. I'm not gonna tell you and dissect her run. I'm just gonna tell you this. When the Divas division happened in WWE, while I don't want to just like take a dump that era of women's wrestling, but it wasn't that great. It wasn't nothing to really write home about. And then the women's revolution happened. You had Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks, Charlotte Flair, Bailey, Lexa Bliss was a part of that too. They like, they took it, right? They elevated the women's division and everything in NXT. But when they left, there was a huge vacuum. And was the whole women's revolution based on the personalities of the horsewomen, or did they start something? And somebody needed to come in, pick up the ball, and run with it, and that was Asuka. Asuka came in and totally just dominated. It was like I wasn't the hugest black and gold fan back in the day because I just didn't have the time to watch it. However, you could hear the rumblings of Asuka. She could not be denied, and it started just getting out. You needed to go and watch her. And so when I did, my mouth dropped. I was like, wow, she is as good as everybody says she is. So yes. NXT Asuka, amazing, amazing. And you know what else would be amazing? This title on your shoulder. If you want to win it, all you gotta do is comment below. I do a belt giveaway every 10,000 subscribers. At 30,000 subscribers, I'm gonna give it away. So comment and subscribe. You can win. It's not a toy, it's a replica. Can be yours free shipping anywhere in the world. We'll give it away on a live stream. All right. And then she gets to the main roster and wins the first ever women's Royal Rumble. This, oh my god, I was so happy in that moment. I'm like, it did not lead to a WrestleMania victory, but that said, right then, if I'm going back to just that singular night, I was like, wow, the winds have changed. We have ourselves a new dominant player in WWE. It just, it just, there was just so much hope. There was just so much hope with Asuka's victory. Now I wasn't a huge fan of Ronda Rousey coming out to steal the moment, but so happy Asuka won. And this leads me to the next great moment, and it's kind of like it's like bittersweet this moment because her match against Charlotte Flair after winning the Royal Rumble was an amazing, awesome match. Problem is, they they let her lose. Like there were there's I just didn't understand the point of letting her lose. If we just watch the match by itself in a bubble, then like spectacular, 10 out of 10, right? But the fact that the fact that it's coupled with her losing after such a long, long, undefeated streak coming from coming from NXT all the way through the Rumble to WrestleMania, one of the worst booking decisions WWE has ever done, in my opinion. But the match, the match is great. Unfortunately, though, she did lose. So so I'm not really saying that this is one of my like favorite moments, but it is a great moment nonetheless for Asuka. So after that, you know, Asuka will win the championship eventually later in the year. She had a really good match with Sasha Banks at Raw. She was in a TLC match with Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair. So there's a lot of good things that happen. And this is not an like an extensive view of Asuka's career. These are just my favorite things about her. So I'm definitely gonna be leaving things off that other people will be like, how could you not say this? And what I am gonna say is actually she was one of the few bright spots in the pandemic era of WWE. Now, this is not WWE's fault. You know, there were no fans in attendance. It was just awkward. WWE was very, very awkward during this time, but Asuka, like, she just ramped it up. She could be a very serious character, but like I think people don't really appreciate how funny she is. And during the pandemic era, she was just she would do the most crazy off-the-walls things. This she would start dancing, she would say weird things, she would just like run amok. Honestly, I highly recommend going back and just Asuka pandemic, WWE, like search it. She was just like, she was really, she was one of the only people that was able to lean into the fact that people weren't there and still be freaking entertaining. I still like remember her and the money in the bank. That's when they did it at WWE HQ. They did the money in the bank, and she gets in the elevator and she's just dancing the whole time. It was hilarious, hilarious. Asuka, pandemic, next is I loved her attention to detail. Now we're gonna talk about her and Kyrie sane as a separate one, but when she was starting to crash out on Kyrie, if you look at her face paint, she had this like this like snake or caterpillar or something, this evil caterpillar going across her face. And every week, as she got more and more delusional and evil, the longer the snake or caterpillar got. It just grew and grew and grew with how evil she was getting. I'm pretty sure nobody told her to do that because they never mentioned it on commentary at all, as far as I know. So yeah, I just love that little detail that Asuka herself put into her character. And also online, she kept feuds going online when she didn't have to. Look at this. This was right before her match with EOSky. And if you can tell, it's EOSky is not rendered. Well, Asuka's saying is you are not ready for Asuka. And if you look at this picture, EOSky is not ready for Asuka. So, yes, loved the details and her going out of her way to make storylines and just her feuds better, even when WWE was phoning it in. This one's kind of cheap because you know everybody loves it and is not like new and exclusive to Asuka, but Asuka had a different way about going, doing the mist. It would just come out of nowhere at these most random times. In her last match against EO Sky, something I never saw before. In 30 years of wrestling, I appreciated the innovation with the mist in that she goes to spit the mist in EO's face, and EO blocks it. And EO block I was like, whoa, that's such a simple, effective thing to do, and I've never seen it happen before. I mean, I've seen people duck and accidentally get hit, but never just straight up blocked. My personal favorite one is that Bill Goldberg hates her.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

A girl beat my winning streak. I can't even remember Asuka is her name. It's some Japanese girl, and they touted her as being the one to have the longest winning streak, and it just so happened that that culminated when I got there.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Triple H just hated me, so he made some Japanese girl, Asuku, I think. And I was like, come on, Goldberg. Like, she could she could run circles around Goldberg, she she could cut a better English promo than Bill Goldberg could any day of the week. Anyone who Bill Goldberg hates, odds are I'm gonna love him. The Kabuki Warriors! Kabuki Warriors, her and Kyrie saying what they were great together, they were absolutely phenomenal. The tag team. In fact, they're one of the few women's tag team that feels like an actual tag team, not just two people thrown together. But the storyline of their dynamic became just top tier. One of my favorite storylines of 2025 and 26 until TKO got greedy and just unceremoniously fired Kyrie Sain, but that's that's that's another topic for another video. Let's just let's just enjoy Asuka here. Asuka crashing out on Kyrie, being being a maniac, being a complete bully. I remember thinking that this storyline was stupid, right? It started off, and I'm like, oh come on. It started off with Asuka literally getting jealous about EOS guy's friendship with Rhea Ripley. I told the Rhea to stay out over. Right? I thought this was so high school, but then suddenly, at some point, I don't even know when, I started to actually look forward to the segments because Asuka more and more got like more jealous, but in not just a not just a high school kind of jealous way, but like a psycho stalker kind of way, someone who was gaslighting, and it became like suddenly, I was like, this heel Asuka is actually good, and this cheesy high school story somehow, some way became the best thing going in WWE. And then whenever she would leave the camera screen and just scream for Kyrie and Kyrie just taking the abuse, like it was great, it was absolutely top-tier stuff. I I loved it. Asuka as a heel was just so far and away, so entertaining, so entertaining. Her heel run does end with with EO Sky beating her. I do feel that they might have sped it up a little bit, or maybe because Kyrie wasn't there to actually finish the story, they do conclude it with Eo will beat Asuka, and then Asuka says, Hey, you know what? I was just looking for somebody to to replace me. I'm looking for someone to take over. So she was being so mean because she was fine to find a successor. So they allude to the fact that that Asuka was being mean this whole time to prepare EO Sky. Yeah, whatever. I'm glad they gave Asuka a send-off. They should have given Asuka a send-off in the ring so she could say goodbye to the fans, but they didn't. I'm glad they did give us something though. So Asuka will leave. But fact is, Asuka was really just into this character. Like, I don't think anybody could have made this storyline work as good as she did because she was just so mean. She would slap Kyrie, she would like talk down to her, she would gaslight her. It was great stuff. I really feel that this would have been a perfect story if they went to fire Kyrie. And then at some point when Eo and Asuka were fighting, that Kyrie came, and then EO and then Asuka sicks her on Eo, but then no, I'm not gonna do it. Slaps Asuka, and then EO gets the win. That would have been the perfect ending, but alas, we did not get it. That said, I loved Asuka's career. I loved Asuka, the character, I love Asuka the wrestler. She was one of the few people that had it was pretty much the entire package. She could wrestle, she could talk, even when she would speak in Japanese, it was great because she was so passionate. She was so passionate, you could still connect. I connected with her Japanese promos that I have no clue what she was saying, more than I connect with Austin Theory doing a promo. Just top tier stuff. Asuka, you are a legend. And if we never see you in a wrestling ring again, then that will be a loss to us. I really do hope that you have a couple matches more left in you. But whatever the case may be, whatever happens to you, Asuka, thank you. Thank you for everything. Appreciate ya. Boys, girls, tell me some of your favorites. Asuka moments in the comment below. See ya later. Bye.