Asuka’s debut was long-awaited and people really wanted to see what The Empress Of Tomorrow was going to do on the main roster. Many people made up dream matches for Asuka and although it’s still early in her run, the feeling is she’s not receiving the greatest push.
Emma was a peculiar opponent for Asuka and a lot of fans thought WWE could do better for her debut match. The fact this match wasn’t an absolute squash also upset some people.
Asuka is still winning on the main roster (so far) but you have to know her first loss is on the way and could spell bad things for her down the line because once she loses once it’s only a matter of time before it happens again. The writing could be on the walls that WWE isn’t going to treat Asuka the way some fans would prefer.
Bryan Alvarez opened up about this subject on Wrestling Observer Live when he discussed Asuka’s first opponent and equated it to how Shinsuke Nakamura is being treated over on the Blue Team.
“If you notice who did they put Asuka in the ring with and who did they put Nakamura in the ring with in their debut? Asuka was in there with Emma and if I recall correctly Nakamura was in there with Ziggler, right?”
“The point of this is in both cases if you look at their opponent in a vacuum… I mean if you imagine in a perfect world Nakamura and Ziggler should be a great match and Emma and Askua should be a great match.”
“Now in both cases they weren’t great matches and in both cases, the person who was put in there was somebody that the fans saw as a geek.”
“If would be great in a vacuum if Asuka and Emma had a blow-away match in her debut but it’s Emma. Emma couldn’t even get on TV. Looks at Ziggler before he had that match with Nakamura — nobody cared one bit about Ziggler. He was a geek. So when you debut them with those guys you can’t just look at it as ‘will it be a great match?’ You have to look at it like what do the fans think about the opponent and what are they gonna think about the debuting wrestler if they go toe-to-toe with this person the way they’re portrayed on TV. In both cases, it was a big mistake.”
If you use the portions of the quotes in this article please credit Wrestling Observer Live with a H/T to Still Real To Us for the transcription
the RAW womens division cannot afford squash matches. if asuka squashes all 6 women then why bother watching those other women anymore? they need to slowburn her dominance because the RAW roster is just too thin. now if it were 20 women roster on RAW, then a squash or three would seem reasonable. why on earth did they even split the women to two shows to begin with. they should have had ONE womens division with a roster size 20 and their matches would be spread to both shows and they could have created womens tag titles to give something for half the roster of women superstars to do.