Current NXT Women’s Champion Asuka has had a run unlike any we’ve ever seen since making her in-ring debut on the Yellow Brand way back in October of 2015. She hasn’t been pinned or submitted — heck, she hasn’t lost a single match. And she now holds the longevity record for any NXT championship by holding the Women’s Championship for over one entire year.
In fact, she’s been so dominant that it’s hard to put it into full perspective … but we’ll try. Thanks in part to the good people over at Cageside Seats, who have been chronicling every Asuka win over the past couple of months, we know that Asuka’s undefeated streak is up to 163-0. That’s just 10 victories shy of Golberg’s legendary 173-0 streak to begin his WCW career — the streak that helped him to become a phenomenon.
Of course, the dirty not-actually-a-secret-at-all secret about Goldberg’s streak is that it was at least partially kayfabe. He probably won over 100 matches before he finally lost at Starrcade in 1998, but he absolutely did not win 173 of them. So Asuka has already breezed right past Goldberg, but that 173-0 is what’s in the (hypothetical) record books, and if she makes it to 174 (which she almost certainly will before the next TakeOver), that’s a hell of a reason to celebrate.
It’s tough to say whether this is an all-time run of being undefeated. It’s possible that someone like Antonio Inoki (or maybe even Great Power Uti) has a longer streak. But keep in mind that even during Bruno Sammartino’s eight-year world title reign, for example, he lost plenty of matches by disqualification and other means.
Regardless, it’s clear that when you talk about dominant wrestlers in the year 2017, there’s Asuka … and then there’s everybody else.
