YMMV / Aksana

• Awesome Moments: Her talent on NXT Season 3 showed that she could do push-ups while supporting her body weight.
• Base-Breaking Character: Is very divisive when it comes to Diva fans. She's either useless and botch prone, or else underrated. This depends on how familiar people are with her work in FCW.
• Broken Base:
  • Which character of Aksana did fans prefer? The ditzy foreigner or the seductive Femme Fatale? Diva Dirt writers preferred the former, while Kaitlyn preferred the latter.
  • The hair change from blonde to brunette - Unnecessary Makeover or an improvement?
  • Maxine later confessed that Aksana's Femme Fatale gimmick was her idea, dividing fans even more as to whether Aksana played it well or Maxine would have been a better fit. As Maxine frequently faced threats from management that she was "too sexual", some fans have theorised that it was given to Aksana because of her foreignness - with the result that the lines were more Innocent Innuendos because of the language barrier.
• Creator's Pet: Reportedly, she was not very well-respected as a performer within the company but kept her job for as long as she did because she was a favorite of executive producer Kevin Dunn, who is basically Vince's right hand man. Karlee Pérez later called her "Triple H's girl" and said she was protected a lot. Although it's worth noting that she was mainly used as a jobber and had only a handful of wins - most of which were in developmental.
• Critical Backlash: Over time, hate towards Aksana's wrestling has died down somewhat. Especially in comparison to Eva Marie and Rosa Mendes, who ended their WWE careers with little visible improvement - and it's generally seen that, while Aksana wasn't amazing, she was getting much better in the ring and was released prematurely.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Got respectably popular while on NXT, due to her partnership with Goldust. This carried over and got her a nice bit of heat when she turned heel. Unfortunately for her, she was eliminated two episodes later.
• Epileptic Trees: When she debuted on Smackdown, the popular fan theory was that Aksana was going to seduce Teddy to help Maxine seize control of the brand (going off Maxine's status as FCW general manager, and Aksana being in her 'Star Squad'). These were killed when Maxine surfaced on NXT Redemption now in a Dark Action Girl role as Derrick Bateman's girlfriend.
• Fetish Retardant: Jack from Diva Dirt (who really didn't like Aksana) had this reaction to her seductive crawl around the ring.
• Growing the Beard:
  • If one looks at her FCW work right after NXT Season 3 ended, Aksana was getting very good in the ring, and enough to be pushed as FCW Divas' Champion. This seemed to backfire as of her main roster debut, where she was in a character role, and got a lot of ring rust.
  • Aksana was actually stepping it up in the ring in the 2013-2014 period right before her release (injury to Naomi's eye aside). She usually had solid matches on Main Event or Superstars, particularly one in 2014 against Natalya that was seen as a massive improvement.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Aksana being part of Maxine's 'Star Squad' in FCW, considering she'd later get Maxine's planned Femme Fatale character and debut on the main roster before her. The Starscream much?
• Never Live It Down:
  • She's unlikely to live down accidentally fracturing Naomi's eye socket with a badly delivered knee drop in a match.
  • On Diva Dirt Jack never stopped talking about a match Aksana had with Kaitlyn where she just did variations of a headlock.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Not to a specific song, but the type of horns used in her theme song (and the heavy amount of theme) make her theme sounds like it could be James Bond villain music. Given that her character was similar to villainous Bond Girls, this may have been intentional.
• Tear Jerker: In an interview she said her release came out of nowhere - and just as she had begun a potential new storyline with Alicia Fox. She filmed a match on Smackdown and after the tapings she was told she was fired. She admits to crying afterwards.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Aksana was getting quite respectable responses for her ring work in FCW. So when she's called up to TV, she's stuck in backstage segments with Teddy Long and does not wrestle at all for six months - even then not joining the women's division until nearly a year later. It's felt that this gave her too much ring rust that she was never quite able to shake off.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Aksana Show - a weekly skit where Aksana would attempt to interview another wrestler (with a Running Gag of all her musical guests cancelling) - could have been incorporated onto the main roster to give Aksana something unique to do.
• Unnecessary Makeover:
  • The hair change from blonde to black is a polarising one.
  • The short hair she gave herself in late 2013.