WWE SmackDown Live – May 14, 2019 (Review)

There’s something to be said about WWE’s methods when it comes to naming tag teams of late. Unfortunately that something is that it’s immeasurably terrible.

Fresh on the back of April’s ‘Viking Experience’ fiasco, SmackDown Live has provided a new wrestling debacle to grease the wheels of debate. Its contribution to our shared societal lore?

The Kabuki Warriors.

Good God, man. Is it too late to get Road Dogg back in the writer’s room? All is forgiven.

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Let me clarify up front, I don’t necessarily hate this name for Asuka and Kairi Sane. I certainly don’t like it – frankly it’s ridiculous. It sounds like something you might call the villainous exchange students on an episode of South Park. But it’s not anywhere near as offensively generic as The Viking Experience. I do hate what it represents though.

And that is WWE’s apparent reliance on naming tag teams using a combination of their most superficial characteristic and whatever noun a random word generator spews out. That’s how we arrived at The Viking Experience for the tattooed, hairy lads who like Viking things. It’s also why SmackDown Live took a long, hard look at the two colourful Japanese ladies – one a ‘Pirate Princess’, the other the ‘Empress of Tomorrow’ – and came up with The Kabuki Warriors. It’s derivative, unoriginal and borderline culturally insensitive. Asuka and Sane deserve better than a silly name.

But anyway, those are just my thoughts on the issue. Let us know your feelings on the new name for Asuka and Kairi Sane. On to the good from SmackDown Live!

• The Kabuki Warriors
• review
• Smackdown
• wwe

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