100 Worst WWE Matches Ever - 76 - Alexa Bliss vs. Asuka
Raw, 18th January 2021
Anyone who has spoken to me for any significant amount of time about wrestling will be able to tell you that one of my least favourite things in wrestling is supernatural powers. While I acknowledge wrestling is a whacky form of entertainment with a lot of stupid stuff in it, I prefer at least some level of realism. After all, if someone is supernaturally powerful, it creates a million logic gaps in the product especially when it comes to beating said figure. Expect to see more choices later in this series (some quite contentious I would imagine) that follow this theme.
We’re in the midst of the pandemic era, and the Thunderdome afforded WWE the opportunity to use some creative choices they otherwise can’t do in front of a live television audience.
Say what you will about supernatural powers in wrestling, but at least in the case of Undertaker and Kane they are at least these intimidating, massive figures. Ultimate Warrior in 1998 WCW, as shit as that debacle was, at least looked like he could beat you up. You can trick your mind into thinking there’s a reason that their opponents are scared because of who Undertaker, Kane, Warrior, Boogeyman, Papa Shango, etc, are.
Alexa Bliss is, with all due respect, one of the least intimidating looking wrestlers on the roster. A wrestler who spent the majority of their main roster run as a cowardly heel.
In October 2020, Alexa aligned herself with the Fiend, Bray Wyatt, in the aftermath of his feud with Braun Strowman. Similar to Wyatt, Alexa developed a childlike personality complete with her own playground, imaginary friend, and a doll named Lilly that WWE took far too long to drop even long after the Fiend ceased to be a thing. However within their childlike personality was the powers of The Fiend, who would turn on a dime into an unstoppable monster, impervious to pain. The two began to feud with Randy Orton, including an intergender match between Orton and Alexa where Alexa used her magical powers to collapse lighting equipment near Orton. A week before this match happens, Alexa would shoot a fireball into Orton’s face. That kind of gives you the impression of the sort of stuff we’re dealing with here.
This match was set up following an edition of Alexa’s Playground earlier in the show, where Asuka was shaken with fear at the childlike Alexa Bliss as she blissfully played on her swing, talking to an imaginary friend.
For additional context, Asuka is both the Raw Women’s Champion at this point and Women’s Tag Team Champion with Charlotte Flair (I too forgot this was a thing). Imagine, slap bang in the middle of an 8 month Raw Women’s title reign, booking this match. One of the most intimidating wrestlers on the roster had to act scared of this previously cowardly heel. I imagine you can start to see the issue here.
The start of the match is standard stuff as Alexa is, outside of a couple taunts, wrestling this match pretty much as you’d expect a standard heel Alexa Bliss match to go. She’s smiling like a child at various points, which is distracting, but outside of that it’s fairly standard Bliss stuff. That is until the lights go out.
Once they come back on, Alexa now has a different t-shirt, lipstick and hairstyle and is just staring at Asuka. And standing there. Menacingly. She even managed to change the lighting in the arena. Asuka tries to attack Alexa with slow strikes, which Alexa easily dodges. This whole sequence feels very anime (akin to when a character receives a massive power up and then easily outclasses their opponent). It does not work in wrestling on any level. She’s toying around with Asuka, stoically staring at her while pacing around the ring. She’s now no longer selling anything Asuka is doing.
Asuka acting scared of Fiend Alexa Bliss is one of those wrestling images that scars my fucking soul. One of Asuka’s big strengths as a performer is her ability to walk a very fine line between being a smiley goofball and an unstoppable killer. Watching her try to act terrified of this 5 foot 4 woman is a catastrophic miscasting of a character. In fact, when has any wrestling company ever successfully been able to present their main babyface champion as scared? You’d think they’d have learned after they had crucified Seth Rollins’ babyface run in 2019. You’d think they’d have learned from the horrible Daniel Bryan vs. Kane feud from 2014. Unlike in horror films, this doesn’t generate sympathy for the babyface because they are the champions - they’re supposed to be the best. By acting scared of some lame lighting, cheap effects, and a bit of makeup, they are going completely against the entire notion of the babyface champion. It doesn’t help that the possessed creepy child trope is something that has only been done correctly in a handful of actual horror films with actual trained actors. Shockingly, Alexa is not capable of capturing that rare magic, and WWE aren’t good enough at writing to make it happen.
The only redeeming part of this is a funny part where Alexa is trying to go for the Mandible Claw on Asuka, but instead it just looks like she’s going for the Touch of Death instead.
Alexa no-sells some more offence from Asuka, and immediately holds Asuka for an uncomfortably long amount of time before hitting the Sister Abigail for an easy win. Asuka, presumably paralysed by fear at this not-at-all intimidating nor scary lady - which makes her look even worse. This plays into the biggest problem with the supernatural Fiend character. They put that over at the expense of everything else around them. When someone can survive pretty much everything and just win convincingly because they have magical powers, it makes everyone around them look bad. And that in turn causes the logic issues when, say, Randy Orton is able to defeat The Fiend with a single RKO.
The only thing stopping this from being higher on this list, and I mean a lot higher, is that it happened on a solitary episode of Raw. In a way, that makes this booking even worse - nothing came from this. Alexa would go on to do nothing worthwhile with her unstoppable powers. Her Royal Rumble appearance later that month lasted all of a minute. She’d go on to emerge from a box-like-structure at Wrestlemania to turn on the Fiend. She would continue her gimmick in an equally frustrating feud with Shayna Baszler, who like Asuka had to pretend to be petrified of Alexa and Lilly. Imagine telling a fan of the NXT women’s division in the late 2010s that the two most dominant women on the brand would in a couple of years be cowering in fear and getting squashed by Alexa Bliss of all people.
Always remember that everything the Fiend has done, or will ever do, is terrible, even things he isn’t directly involved in.
Up Next - Two of WWE’s biggest stars in history clash on Saturday Night’s Main Event.
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