History Trivia / KanakoUrai

* DoingItForTheArt: She started claiming to be an artist who wrestles only to make her "twisted" kind of art a reality in the ring. While this new gimmick became very prominent on her social media after her feud with Becky in 2020, it never manifested in any way on live TV, unfortunately.
* PlayingAgainstType: As a face in America. She's been typecast as a heel in Japan after getting heat from the wrong people. NXT merged the two, where she was a face but very much GoodIsNotNice. She did eventually turn heel on NXT in 2017, which was the first major heel turn for her in America, and later again in the Main Roster in 2019 as part of the Kabuki Warriors.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen: She's had two big ones so far during her time in WWE.
** During the middle of her undefeated run in NXT, someone realized that there actually was a woman employed by WWE who'd beaten her - trainer Sara Amato had several wins over Asuka dating back to their indy days as Kana and Sara Del Rey. There was talk of Amato coming out of retirement for a one-off with Asuka, but between concerns over the finish being obvious (would they really have Asuka's streak ended by an inactive wrestler that casual fans had never heard of?) and over match quality (Amato hadn't wrestled a match in 4+ years at that point) they decided against it.
** In 2018, with rumors of Creator/RondaRousey coming to WWE, Asuka - still on her by-that-time-massive undefeated streak - started winning matches via armbar. It seemed obvious that they were building towards an Asuka[=/=]Rousey feud. Immediately after Asuka won the Woman's Royal Rumble, Rousey's signing was officially announced, and Rousey came out to the ring. Asuka, who'd never left the ring after winning the rumble, refused Rousey's handshake and sneered at her instead. And with the stage set, the whole thing was never mentioned again, with Rousey going to Raw and Asuka going to [=SmackDown=]. The two never met in the ring at all, Asuka quit using the armbar and her undefeated streak was anticlimactically broken by Charlotte.

* NamesTheSame:
** Apart from her namesake, Wrestling/LionessAsuka, there is another Japanese wrestler called ASUKA. This caused confusion when the latter ASUKA came out as transgender in December 2017. (As a result, this other ASUKA is known as VENY in their US appearances for Wrestling/AllEliteWrestling.)
** Also, her former ring name, Kana, is not to be confused with Tokyo Joshi Pro's Kanna (even though her name was misspelled as such when she first turned up in the NXT audience).

* {{Corpsing}}: [[spoiler:She came to the ring in-character when Wrestling/BeckyLynch relinquished the Raw Women's Title to her. But once Becky reveals her pregnancy, Asuka couldn't contain her happiness and breaks character.]]

* DoingItForTheArt: She started claiming to be an artist who wrestles only to make her "twisted" kind of art a reality in the ring. While this new gimmick became very prominent on her social media after her feud with Becky in 2020, it has yet to manifest in any way on live TV.

* PlayingAgainstType: As a face in America. She's been typecast as a heel in Japan after getting heat from the wrong people. NXT merged the two, where she was a face but very much GoodIsNotNice. She did eventually turn heel on NXT in 2017, which was the first major heel turn for her in America, and later again in the Main Roster in 2019 as part of the Kabuki Warriors.

** Also, her former ring name, Kana, is not to be confused with Tokyo Joshi Pro's Kanna.

* NamesTheSame: Apart from her namesake, Wrestling/LionessAsuka, there is another Japanese wrestler called ASUKA. This caused confusion when the latter ASUKA came out as transgender in December 2017. Also, her former ring name, Kana, is not to be confused with Tokyo Joshi Pro's Kanna.

* NamesTheSame: Apart from her namesake, Wrestling/LionessAsuka, there is another Japanese wrestler called ASUKA. This caused confusion when the latter ASUKA came out as transgender in December 2017.

* MakingUseOfTheTwin: Kanako has a twin sister, Fumie Urai. The two both portray Asuka in the WWE: they wear a mask when making their entrance in order to hide the subtle facial differences between the two, removing it once in the ring so they become harder to differentiate when the fight begins.

* PlayingAgainstType: As a face in America. She's been typecast as a heel in Japan after getting heat from the wrong people. NXT merged the two, where she was a face but very much GoodIsNotNice. (She did eventually turn heel on NXT in 2017, which was the first major heel turn for her in America, before reverting back to GoodIsNotNice when called to the main roster.)

* PlayingAgainstType: As a face in America. She's been typecast as a heel in Japan after getting heat from the wrong people. NXT merged the two, where she was a face but very much GoodIsNotNice. (She did eventually turn heel on NXT in 2017, which was the first major heel turn for her in America, before reverting back to Good Is Not Nice when called to the main roster.)

* OneOfUs:
** She's a hardcore video game enthusiast. As she has a very large video game collection and she's part-time video game journalist and designer, used to work for UsefulNotes/{{Xbox}} magazine and even put the Xbox logo on her gear when she wrestled in Japan. Then there's the fact she used the final boss theme from ''VideoGame/{{Okami}}'' as entrance music prior to NXT!
** She's also a big-time ''[[Anime/JojosBizarreAdventure JoJo]]'' fan.

* OneOfUs: She's a hardcore video game enthusiast. As she has a very large video game collection and she's part-time video game journalist and designer, used to work for UsefulNotes/{{Xbox}} magazine and even put the Xbox logo on her gear when she wrestled in Japan. Then there's the fact she used the final boss theme from ''VideoGame/{{Okami}}'' as entrance music prior to NXT!

* OneOfUs: She's a part-time video game journalist, used to work for UsefulNotes/{{Xbox}} magazine and even put the Xbox logo on her gear when she wrestled in Japan. Then there's the fact she used the final boss theme from ''VideoGame/{{Okami}}'' as entrance music prior to NXT!

* NamesTheSame: Apart from her namesake, Wrestling/LionessAsuka, there is another Japanese wrestler called ASUKA.

* PlayingAgainstType:
** As a face in America. She's been typecast as a heel in Japan after getting heat from the wrong people. NXT merged the two, where she was a face but very much GoodIsNotNice.
** In 2017 she turned heel on NXT, which was the first major heel turn for her in America.

* PlayingAgainstType: As a face in America. She's been typecast as a heel in Japan after getting heat from the wrong people.

* OneOfUs: She's a part-time video game journalist, used to work for UsefulNotes/{{Xbox}} magazine and even put the Xbox logo on her gear when she wrestled in Japan. Then there the fact she used the final boss theme from ''VideoGame/{{Okami}}'' as entrance music prior to NXT!

* OneOfUs: She's a part-time video game journalist, used to work for UsefulNotes/{{Xbox}} magazine and even put the Xbox logo on her gear when she wrestled in Japan. Then there the fact she used the final boss theme from ''VideoGame/{{Okami}}'' as entrance music prior to NXT!