Asuka said to be ‘semi-retired’ following WWE Backlash
Asuka is said to be semi-retired.
Following her loss to IYO SKY at WWE Backlash on Saturday, Asuka embraced her former mentee after months of feuding.
On the post-WWE Backlash edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer said that while he has not received details on what semi-retired means in Asuka’s case, people were wishing her goodbye backstage.
Meltzer said:
“So, the story I heard is that she is semi-retired. I haven’t really gotten an exact meaning of what semi-retired means, but I guess people were wishing her goodbye and things like that backstage. So I don’t know if that means she’s going to Japan and still wrestle. I don’t know if that means she’s going to still do stuff here and there, but I was told semi-retired.”
“That sucks, I’m going to miss Asuka,” Bryan Alvarez said.
Later in the show, Dave and Bryan discussed the possibility of Asuka having been part of recent WWE roster cuts.
Meltzer said, “I wonder if she was with other people that was cut. I mean, I don’t know.”
Alvarez said, “I can’t fathom that but I guess it’s possible. But I mean, Kairi was cut and she didn’t even get used to the end of this thing, so.”
The 44-year-old Asuka has been with WWE since the summer of 2015. During her time with the company, she’s been a four-time women’s champion on the main roster, a one-time NXT Champion, and has held the WWE Women’s Tag Team titles five times: three with Kairi Sane, and one each with Charlotte Flair and Alexa Bliss. She won the Women’s Money in the Bank in 2020 and the Women’s Royal Rumble in 2018.
The full edition of Wrestling Observer Radio is available here for subscribers.
Ian Carey is a writer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, whose work has been featured in NOW Magazine, The Huffington Post, and more. A lifelong wrestling aficionado born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, he has covered the industry for a decade and a half. He joined the f4wonline.com team in 2019.