Whether it’s coincidental or not, I feel like every Wrestlemania Season™ I always find some excuse to contemplate and write about the value of all of the WWE championships. Maybe it’s because Wrestlemania is the culmination of the year’s stories and scripts, and it’s theoretically where everything comes to a boil, and the chips are all put on the table so that things can be settled, and things can be sown for the year after, but the bottom line is that everything is on the line, and the paths into the future become clearer for all the important players.
The thing is, the WWE has done a lot of things and integrated some plot devices that have taken their own shapes, and manifested into tangible things that are on par with championships, if not competitive in value with the coveted belts that superstars wish to hold. Be them briefcases, winning streaks, or the ironically self-aware rights to face certain superstars or even simply get to point at signs, there are things that exist in the WWE Universe™ that have become as valuable, if not more, than the litany of belts available in the company today.
And above all of the belts, briefcases and signs stands a streak, the one currently ongoing with Asuka, who hasn’t lost a single match since arriving with the company in 2015. Sure, wrestling is scripted and the finishes all predetermined, but it still takes a tremendous amount of work to get people to like and care about you to where a promoter sees the value of keeping that character completely undefeated for ongoing three years straight.
It goes without saying that Asuka’s streak is the most valuable commodity in the WWE today. I know they’re really trying to make it look like she’s going to run into some massive resistance at Wrestlemania when she takes on Charlotte Flair in a proverbial Championship vs. Streak match, but I would wager money that Asuka wins regardless, and then the streak has a belt as well, increasing its overall value further.
And Asuka has worked her ass off over the last three years and making the streak mean something, first by dominating NXT, and missing out on the first wave of superstar callups, solely based on the fact that she was carrying the developmental league and couldn’t be promoted without a suitable cache of replacements in place, before showing up to the main roster and continuing her stellar work rate with a wider variety of female opponents.
Furthermore, streaks in general are things that require a lot of time and patience to culture, and in an industry where patience is scant and knee-jerk reactions are commonplace, successfully developing one and keeping the company’s faith to maintain it are extremely rare things. Consider the fact that Goldberg’s 162-0 streak was snapped nearly 20 years ago, and up until now hasn’t seen anything remotely close in storyline to remember the importance of an undefeated streak; and many former guys in the industry even regret breaking it then, because there’s no limit to how valuable a streak can get, because the longer it goes unbroken, the more meaning it has when it actually does.
Ironically, my biggest concern is that the WWE will eventually hit a wall of what they could possibly do with Asuka, and eventually run out of competitors. Women’s wrestling has been growing rapidly, but it’s still staggering behind the men’s side, and there will come a point where viable challengers to break the streak will either be girls Asuka has already defeated time and time again already, or worse off, it’s going to go to some tourist like Ronda Rousey. If the streak becomes too grandiose, it stops being a matter of trying to execute a suitable end to it, but the difficulty of building up a woman worthy of doing it.
But let’s cross that bridge when the time comes. Frankly, I hope the streak doesn’t ever end, even if it means that the blue women’s championship becomes worthless in the sense that there’s almost never any chance Asuka drops it, because if there’s just one thing that I still enjoy in a fake sport geared to kids, it’s Asuka’s streak.
And the rest of the rankings:
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