To anyone who didn't see Takeover, you should try and look up Asuka's debut match on the Network or Youtube. She has something for sure. I'm pretty excited about watching her career unfold in NXT. She's a terrific worker.
The match Asuka managed to get out of Dana Brooke at Takeover, was damn near miraculous. I do think Dana is getting better, and I'm actually hopeful that she'll be a valuable addition to the roster at some point. She's athletic and seems capable of playing a character, she's just still very green. And it'll probably be quite some time before she's in another match as good as this one. That's how good Asuka was. Her chain wrestling looked awesome, her strikes looked dangerous and the crowd were super into her.
She has tons of personality and star power too. She had a real presence when she was making her entrance. She gets her character over really well through her body language and facial expressions. She comes off as slightly crazed/dangerous, while still being a loud, funny, colourful character. I'm impressed by her level of charisma.
I know I've picked on the poor guy a few times before, but the difference between Asuka and Itami on NXT is like night and day. He's very dull and lacking in character, and the move to WWE seems to have taken away anything exciting about the guy. He might be having trouble adapting to their style, and without being able to cut promos to get his character across, he's having trouble doing it in other ways. Asuka in comparison seems to demonstrate that Japanese wrestlers are capable of getting their personality over big in front of a WWE crowd. Even without speaking, you know exactly who she is: she's a badass who will kill bitches who are dumb enough to piss her off. I can't wait to see more of this.
It's great to see another genuinely good female wrestler in NXT now that Sasha, Charlotte and Becky are all on the main roster. I'm hoping she doesn't turn heel, because I think she makes a great babyface, but a face vs face match with Bayley for the title could still be awesome at some point. In the mean time, I'd be happy to just watch her kill every heel woman on the roster.
What did everyone else think of Asuka? From the very small amount I've seen of her, it looks like she's one of the better talents on NXT at the moment. Now that she's in the mix, and James Storm is debuting too, I might have to start watching NXT every week again.