Asuka was undefeated for the first two and a half years of her WWE career, spanning her time in NXT and first six months on the WWE main roster.
After winning the Royal Rumble match, Asuka went on to challenge Charlotte Flair for the SmackDown Women’s Championship at WrestleMania 34, where she ended up coming up short, losing her first match in a controversial decision from the company.
WWE Hall of Famer Road Dogg was the lead writer of SmackDown around the time, and he spoke about WrestleMania 34 on his Oh… You Didn’t Know podcast, and the decision to have Asuka lose on the show.
He said:
“Either you’re gonna put Asuka over (at WrestleMania 34) and she maintains that thing or you’re gonna put Charlotte (Flair) over and holy mackerel, she’s broken the streak and you know, the streak only goes for so long. You can’t be undefeated forever, you know what I mean?
“As much as everybody hated it with The Undertaker’s streak being broken, I guess he could’ve just retired with his streak unbroken but they were thinking about the future and who do we give this (to)? Same thing, same thing here. If you’re gonna beat Asuka, who you gonna give that carrot to? Because she’s undefeated and so somebody who beats her, you better be looking to do something with and of course we were looking to do something with Charlotte always, and so, that goes back and forth and you’ll hear ideas for each to go over and the bottom line is you look at the roster and go, hey, on the other side of this, who’s better as a champion? Who has more people to work with?
“There’s a lot of stuff people don’t think about (that) goes into all this and so there’s a lot of thinking down to the wire all the time. It’s jst a little different when it’s Mania. But a lot of meeting behind closed doors goes on there too and people negotiate. People go in and have an idea and maybe it wins the day, and something changes. That happens.”
transcription via POST Wrestling
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