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I’m not silly. Well, I’m not that silly. At least a number of the time, when the few neurons I’ve left fireplace on the similar time. I do know Rhea Ripley is successful the Royal Rumble on Saturday. You know Rhea Ripley is successful the Royal Rumble on Saturday. And that’s not a nasty factor! She’s nice. But it ought to be Asuka.
Rhea has been an underutilized badass just about her whole time on the principle roster. She’s nearly the one benefit of Judgement Day, and I say that as an unapologetic Damien Priest fan (I preferred him even when his title was “Punishment Martinez,” which was an enormous impediment to recover from). Even whereas being saddled with the failson cipher that’s Dominik Mysterio, Rhea has shined because the dominatrix who simply give up her job as a result of she didn’t get to inflict sufficient ache. She is mainly the one powerhouse on the ladies’s roster that’s one thing different than simply huge. Rhea can do quite a lot of shit!
She’s additionally bought a historical past with Bianca Belair, going all the best way again to NXT. There isn’t any query they may have a Mania-quality match in Los Angeles, and will conceivably steal the present if given 15-20. Belair has grow to be one thing of a Mania specialist, and Rhea is definitely on that degree.
But WWE and Triple H can get to that match with out Rhea successful the Rumble. She’s actually the one credible challenger on Raw as it’s. Bayley has been made to look extra doof-ish than conniving, and he or she’s already had her photographs at Bianca. Becky Lynch has a “Been there, done that” really feel in the intervening time for Belair. Unless Alexa Bliss’s flip to the theatrical with Bray Wyatt actually takes maintain, she doesn’t fairly have the in-ring chops to be in a Mania match with Belair. And even when it does, Bray Wyatt’s theatricality hasn’t ever actually labored on the Mania stage (suppose bugs, suppose Alexa herself popping out of that fucking field). Rhea-Bianca is already within the water.
What WWE wants is one thing for Charlotte. The SmackDown girls’s roster is fairly barren in the intervening time. Raquel Rodriguez appears to be getting warmed up for Charlotte, however she’s not prepared for this type of platform. Ronda Rousey is off having one other pout as a result of issues didn’t go her method just like the spoiled brat she is. Which has left Shayna Bazler twisting within the wind, although she is likely to be a fairly good dance companion for Charlotte. Or she can be, if she’d gotten to do something on the principle roster as she did in NXT, which she hasn’t. To the WWE viewers, she’s only a face within the crowd.
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Flair needs a legitimate challenger
If the goal is to give fans a Charlotte match they can actually sink their teeth into, then there’s only one choice. Asuka hasn’t disappeared like some, though she hasn’t been front and center since sort of pairing up with Belair and Bliss to take on Bayley, Iyo Sky, and Dakota Kai. The last time we saw Asuka, a month ago on Raw, she’d removed her facepaint but had a new, steely edge in her match with Ripley. Fans felt like she was getting back to her NXT/unstoppable monster days, if not her Japan/homicide clown days. On social media, she’s been teasing discovering a more recent and/or higher model of herself, and there’d be no higher place for her to introduce a brand new leaf than strolling into the Rumble and clearing out the ring as a refreshed aggression machine.
She additionally has a wealthy historical past with Charlotte. The two of them possibly had the perfect match at WrestleMania 34, when Charlotte ended Asuka’s unbeaten streak that had spanned her NXT and WWE profession to that time. Asuka additionally needed to get fed to Charlotte proper earlier than Wrestlemania 35, forking over her title as Charlotte was retrofitted/jammed into the Lynch-Rousey match the place she actually didn’t match.
Asuka hasn’t actually recovered from that, which most followers thought was fully unfair. She had a terrific run as champ a yr later…throughout the pandemic. She by no means bought to hold a title again in entrance of dwell audiences. But it was the having to do the job to Charlotte to meet the imaginative and prescient that Vince McMahon had for the first-ever girls’s important occasion that left followers feeling like Asuka had been cheated. There is unfinished enterprise right here, which a Mania match might heart on.
WWE’s underutilized ace
It’s that feeling that Asuka has by no means hit the heights she’s greater than able to with WWE that makes her your best option to win the Rumble for a second time. She’d be the primary to try this, which provides her much more sheen to take a main Mania spot. While HHH has introduced a bunch of wrestlers again into the corporate, who has actually been remade and improved? Maybe Rhea? Debatable. Here’s an actual likelihood.
A brand new daybreak for WWE, together with Asuka exhibiting a want to remake herself, provides each a highway to a real Asuka revival. Her profession has been outlined by Charlotte, and by dropping to Charlotte. First, it was the top of her dominance. Then it was an instance of how she would by no means be held to the identical degree as Charlotte or Becky and even Ronda, regardless of seemingly being a greater employee than all of them. She belongs there, although.
Another match with Charlotte can put all that firmly up to now and arrange one nice important roster run for Asuka. She’s 41 now, she gained’t be round ceaselessly. WWE might get loads out of a reborn, murderous, scary-as-fuck Asuka. More than the sort of cute, very humorous, nonetheless technically gifted performer they’ve had for the previous yr or two. There’s no higher approach to get to the primary avenue than having her lastly get one over Charlotte, and the symbolism of a remade Asuka transferring past Vince’s outdated standby/binky in Charlotte can be onerous to overlook. And the easiest way to get there may be for no matter this new model of Asuka goes to be taking the Rumble.