During Monday’s RAW, a commercial aired in Hawaii promoting a blockbuster double main event for WWE’s upcoming live event from Honolulu’s Neal S Blaisdell Arena on June 29th.
Top matches advertised for that card include:
Brock Lesnar vs. Kevin Owens
John Cena vs. Shinsuke Nakamura
WWE Women’s Champion Charlotte vs. NXT Women’s Champion Asuka
Other top stars WWE Champion Roman Reigns, Tag Team Champions The New Day, The Club (AJ Styles, Luke Gallows, Karl Anderson), Chris Jericho, Bray Wyatt, The Usos and Natalya.
Late last night, newly crowned NXT Women’s Champion Asuka posted several lengthy tweets in Japanese, and the always reliable E. Key Oide on Twitter translated them. It turns out she had some pointed comments at those who point to her and Shinsuke Nakamura’s backgrounds in Japanese promotions as the reason for their superior skill level, as well as criticisms of the women’s wrestling scene back at home. In Japan, the women’s wrestling scene, while having a loyal cult following, has been running on fumes with independent level promotions for the past decade-plus. It’s a far cry from when All Japan Women was a hugely successful touring promotion in the ’80s and ’90s, and in here tweets, Asuka goes into why.
Here’s the translation (again, go follow E. Key Oide if you’re into translations from Japanese wrestlers and stuff like that):
I got the title! And I did it with a zero loss winning streak, record-setting quickness. I see some people tweeting about the high level of Japanese performers, based on my accomplishments. Those types of comments just don’t sit well with me. I’ll come right out and say it! The level of women in Japan isn’t that great. My fights against various Divas and experiences with many superstars on my road to gaining the title makes me sure of that.
The Japanese performers who are making strides in WWE aren’t making strides because Japan is at a higher level. It’s all because of the skills and techniques possessed by the individual. In the past, I’d criticized women’s wrestling for only doing matches that appeal to fans of women’s wrestling. And now I can expand on that point. This type of wrestling is too niche to succeed. They try to appeal solely to a Japanese audience, yet expect to gain popularity on a global level.
There’s been instances where Japan was expected to be the best in the world for a certain field or industry, but ended up being surpassed before they knew it…
I now see a similar phenomenon taking place for wrestling. I don’t consider myself to be a representative of Japanese women’s wrestling, just because I’m Japanese. Why? Because, like I’ve said before, there’s too many elements that prohibit this type of wrestling from attaining worldwide success. It could be partly due to a difference in culture: Japanese wrestling fans see wrestling as a process of subtraction, while the WWE Universe see wrestling as a process of addition. If wrestling is considered as a process of subtraction, then there is more emphasis placed on avoiding mistakes, which leads to tighter matches… at the cost of any hope for growth.
Why? Because everybody looks for that one mistake, then makes a huge fuss over it, like they’ve accomplished something great. The result? I was the only female wrestler in Japan able to take this path. But! If you want to abandon all pretense that Japanese women’s wrestling can compete on a global level? If you want to stay the course, only focus on appealing to women’s wrestling fans?
The issues I bring up cease to be problems. In that case, it’d be like comparing apples and oranges -that style is in a world entirely removed from mine. Ultimately, whoever gets results will have the greatest weapon in justifying their position.
Me? I’ll just keep raising the bar with the Divas.
The note about not understanding how to appeal to audiences outside of Japan may be a pointed reference to New Japan Pro Wrestling. In the last year or two, management has publicly spoken about wanting to expand internationally but don’t appear to have a good roadmap on how to get there. The NJPW World streaming service was a step in the right direction, but they haven’t made any real attempt to make alternate language versions of the website. There’s an integrated Google Translate mechanism to view the site in English, but being a machine translation, it’s heavily flawed, and you can’t use the site’s search feature in English.
There was also a lot of criticism from fans and wrestling media with their choice of English announcers for major shows. It was less that they picked Kevin Kelly and Matt Striker (though there was negativity on Striker in some circles) and more that NJPW’s most visible in English via their AXS TV show. While the AXS show is produced via an agreement with Japanese TV network TV Asahi and not NJPW proper, the AXS announcing team (then Josh Barnett and Mauro Ranallo, now Barnett and Jim Ross) were the voice of NJPW to English speaking fans. Yet Ranallo and Barnett weren’t contacted.
That said, Stardom, the leading women’s promotion in Japan, is also trying to make strides with Stardom World, a paid subscription channel on YouTube. It’s available to most of the world, there’s no commentary (as opposed to Japanese commentary), it’s inexpensive at $4.99 per month, and being on YouTube means it’s accessible on many more devices than NJPW World. Asuka’s not wrong that the style can be way too niche for a lot of people, but her success in NXT may lead to more people at least checking out Stardom World’s 14 day free trial.
NXT Diva Emma was knocked unconscious in the ring by Asuka at Friday night’s live event from Cleveland, Ohio. Asuka unleashed a flurry of offense on Emma that ended with a stiff kick to the face.
Last night, Wrestling Twitter was abuzz over something that had been discovered when a fan was playing around with Google Translate. Apparently trying to figure out if there was some special meaning to Sami Zayn’s name (or more likely just playing around), someone translated “Sami Zayn” from English to Arabic. Remember, Rami Sebei, the man behind Sami Zayn, is of Syrian descent, so it’s not like this was the most random thing in the world. So then, when you translate the Arabic text back to English, it says…El Generico??!?!?
Clearly, there’s a big wrestling fan at the Google Translate team as no, that’s not any kind of real translation. Other machine translation sites, like the one on Bing, turn it into “Zain Sami,” and El Generico was, of course, Rami Sebei’s pre-WWE gimmick. Officially, though, they’re friends, as opposed to the Hideo Itami, Finn Balor, and Asuka treatment of acknowledging their past with different names.
It wouldn’t be a huge surprise if there were more wrestling relate Easter eggs like this within Google Translate, but since this one is so perfect, it may be best if they just stopped with this one. They can’t top it.
The following report comes courtesy of F4WOnline.com:
Dark match:
Jeff Cobb defeated El Mariachi Loco
Wednesday, February 24th:
Jack Evans defeated PJ Black
Jack cut a heel promo on the crowd before the match started where he called himself “The Dragon Slayer”. Midway through, Drago appeared on one of the corner platforms wearing a dragon skull and taunting Jack with nunchucks. Finish saw Drago come down and try to spit mist at Jack, but ended up hitting PJ which led to a rollup.
King Cuerno defeated Killshot
They messed up a move on the apron but it didn’t take much away from the match. Cuerno kept beating on Killshot afterwards until Fenix came out for the save
Chavo Guerrero, Mr Cisco, & Cortez Castro defeated El Texano Jr in a gauntlet match
Cisco is eliminated within 10 seconds after a kick to the face, Castro put up more of a fight in that it took just 2 minutes to beat him. Most of the match was Chavo/Texano with Cortez using Texano’s rope to trip him and hold his feet down for the cover
Johnny Mundo defeated Cage
A woman came out to distract Cage but I could not identify her (Blonde hair, similar attire to Asuka). After the match, both of them beat down and taunted Cage. Good match
Wednesday, March 2nd:
Cobra ??? (Last name sounded like Moon) defeated Sexy Star via submission
Cobra made her debut and looked to be Cheerleader Melissa under a blue snakeskin bodysuit (If it helps, she had a tiki tattoo on the back of her neck). The Mack came out to cheer Sexy on and Marty the Moth was in the stands near the end to distract Sexy. Cobra won with a rear naked choke and did some hissing towards Marty, clearly some type of relationship between them.
Prince Puma vs Pentagon Jr went to a no contest
Nice back & forth matchup until Mil Muertes ran 5 minutes into the match and beat both of them out. Mil left both laying with a double flatliner
Fenix defeated King Cuerno in a ladder match to regain the Gift of the Gods title
Awesome ladder match which saw them fight in the stands and in the floor seats. Match ended with Fenix giving Cuerno a top-rope hurricanrana through a table, then grabbing the title. The tapings ended with a staredown between Mil Muertes from his throne and Fenix on the ladder.
– In the video featured above, Chad Gable and Jason Jordan talk about defeating The Ascension on this week’s edition of NXT.
– Announced for next week’s NXT is a contract signing between NXT Champion Finn Balor and Samoa Joe for their match at the upcoming NXT TakeOver: London special, which takes place on Wednesday, December 16th at SSE Wembley Arena in London, England. As noted, the special will air live on the WWE Network at 3pm EST. / Noon PST. on 12/16.
– In addition to the contract signing, the following matches were announced for next week’s NXT, which will be taped on Thursday night, November 19th from Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida.
* Bayley vs. Eva Marie
* Asuka vs. Dana Brooke
* The Mechanics vs. The Vaudevillains
WWE announced this week that the next NXT TakeOver special, which is scheduled for Wednesday, December 16th, will air live on the WWE Network from the SSE Wembley Arena in London, England at 3 p.m. Eastern time and Noon Pacific time.
Although an official lineup has yet to be released, the card is loooking like:
NXT Champion Finn Balor vs. Samoa Joe
Apollo Crews vs. Baron Corbin
Asuka vs. Emma
The 12/16 TakeOver show is also expected to include NXT Tag-Team Title and NXT Women’s Title matches. Those two title matches should become clear on November 19th when the final television tapings leading up to the show are taped at Full Sail University.
Make sure to join us here at SEScoops.com on Wednesday, December 16th for the best NXT TakeOver: London live results coverage on the web!
Welcome back to the SEScoops Mailbag. After the questions below, we’ve answered everything sent in so far. If you’ve got a question you want answered here, send an email to SEScoops@gmail.comwith “Mailbag” as the subject line. Let’s roll:
Buzzard follower asks … Since survivor series is sort of like deadly games part 2 (1998 ss) what do you think about roman like the rock will turn heel and join the authority the way rock did with the corporation? also what do you think if the finalist are ambrose and roman when/if the heel turn goes down
Brad Davis: Reigns turning heel, joining The Authority and winning the WWE title like The Rock did at Deadly Game is the best possible booking scenario for Survivor Series. Rollins is out for the better part of a year and now The Authority is without a main event guy in their camp. It makes sense to have a heel champion as we close out the year and round the corner into WrestleMania season.
Reigns winning the title as babyface would be anti-climatic and he’s just simply not over enough where a babyface title win could propel him to that “new face of the company” status. They’ve been trying for well over a year to get him over as the new top babyface. The only chance Reigns has to be “the next John Cena” is to turn him heel and let him come into his own in that role before an eventual babyface turn years down the road.
And yes, Reigns’ big turn should come in the finals against Dean Ambrose. Reigns’ turn wouldn’t have as big of an impact as it would if Dean was the guy he was screwing over. The two have them been buddying around on WWE TV for the past few months and can feud for the next several months until after the Royal Rumble when Reigns’ WrestleMania challenger is lined up.
UltraManTits Black asks … Im of the belief that Asuka has a much better chance of one day being the Divas champ than Hideo does of being WWE champ because the Divas are less focused on promos than the men are and the language barrier will keep Hideo from being in a main event. Do you think its better for a foreign born wrestler to hook up with a manager to do their talking for them, or to just go the Lucha Dragons’ route and stay silent?
A Realist: I am of the belief that knowing the character and the motivation of a character goes a long way in getting talent over. Otherwise, why should I cheer for this guy or girl? Now, not everyone needs to speak, but they certainly need something else to get the audience to stand behind. If you’re not establishing a certain appeal to the voiceless character, such as say, Goldberg’s streak, then they need something else to back them up–and that’s the ‘why are you here?’. Wrestling is not all about wrestling, after all.
Let’s just put it this way: despite his losses, there’s a reason Bray Wyatt is still a main attraction. Why Dean Ambrose is so over. The reason for 2011, the summer of Punk. The current reason why New Day is the hottest act in WWE. They can talk.
And then there’s a reason why people like the Lucha Dragons, and Cesaro are spinning their tires.
So the long-short–yes, I believe mouthpieces are more than beneficial to talents that are unable to speak for themselves.
Mr. Honesty asks … I see this tournament as the perfect opportunity to build some stars. Not necessarily on the main event card, but it might create guys that’ll prove to be upper midcard material. That being said, who do you see as someone that might emerge as a top midcard guy? Any surprising superstars come to mind?
David Bixenspan: So far, it doesn’t look like anyone is being moved up that much more. Cesaro feels like the guy who could benefit most even on losing, but you know how that goes with him. Ambrose probably could gain some forward momentum with a turn, since WWE badly needs a new top heel more than anything else. Which is to say hopefully he’ll go back to where he would have been if he turned on The Shield instead of Seth Rollins. It looked like he would turn heel en route to being an even bigger babyface down the line, but of course that didn’t happen.
That said, as the bracket sits, it looks like Reigns vs. Ambrose is the natural finals, with one or the other turning. And I’m not sure they have the wherewithal to book the other matches to be beneficial to anyone else.
Sunil asks … 1. Did cm punk really poop in the ring and did the ref really grab it? 2. Why doesn’t wwe use custom sets anymore?
A Realist: 1) Well, he for sure pooped himself–according to him. It was during a Smackdown episode match against Dean Ambrose. He claims that he was on so many antibiotics that he let ‘er rip in his trunks.
As for the ref picking it up, that is widely speculated on, as many believe it was a piece of Ambrose’s Shield gear that he actually moved. I personally have a hard time believing he grabbed it barehanded, considering they have latex gloves in their pockets at all times now, due to accidental bleeding from the wrestlers.
2) I assume by ‘custom sets’, you mean the Pay Per View specific arena sets. If so, two reasons:
One: Money, plain and simple. Those sets weren’t cheap.
Two: They use a giant set for Wrestlemania every year. If every PPV has a custom set, that detracts from the importance of the ‘grandest stage’ that is Wrestlemania.
Undertaker316 asks… Do you think the Authority story line has run its course?
Brad Davis: Assuming that you are asking if The Authority angle is ‘tired and stale,’ the storyline has certainly run its course. As much as Triple H and Stephanie have established their characters on WWE TV as major heels, it’s still the “Evil Authority Figure” angle that worked for a few years during the Monday Night Wars era and has been carbon-copied to death over the past decade by WWE and TNA. WWE needs a complete overhaul and the alarmingly low RAW viewership week after week backs this up. In the event that WWE would shake up the presentation of their product from top the bottom, I don’t see where there is a place for overbearing heel authority figures that soak up all the TV time, place themselves as the focal point of the WWE Universe, belittle andliterally slap around the wrestlers.
If you are asking “will WWE be concluding the Authority storyline soon?” – then the answer is obviously not. Triple H and Stephanie will be fixtures on WWE television for years to come. If you want to continue following along week after week, you’ve got two choices – you can sell out or you can buy in.
Got a question you want answered here in the SEScoops Mailbag? Send it over to SEScoops@gmail.com.
– As noted earlier, NXT Diva Asuka (formerly known as Kana) will be making her TV debut next week for her official contract signing. It’s rumored that she’ll be making her in-ring debut at NXT Takeover: Respect.
– WWE confirmed that next week’s NXT will feature Tyler Breeze vs. Bull Depsey and The Vaudevillains defending the NXT tag team titles against Blake & Murphy.
Lioness Asuka was considered the second most-popular woman pro wrestlers ever in Japan, as she was part of the 1980s tag-team known as “The Crush Gals” during the era when women’s pro wrestling in Japan did television ratings equivalent to what the NFL was doing at the same time in the United States.
