Asuka is RAW Women’s Champion, but it takes a lot of people working very hard in order to make everything come together for a successful Superstar. Asuka’s mist has become a staple for her character, but it was Shane Helms who pitched it first.
While speaking to the ROH Strong podcast, Shane Helms, who just returned as a producer from WWE, spoke about WWE’s creative process. He really enjoyed the storyline between Asuka and Kairi Sane, and he didn’t want them to be too heelish. This is where the green mist idea came into play.
“It was my idea for Asuka to start using the mist, and we had a lot of fun with that. This was a great story. So that was when her and Kairi Sane were turning heel that night and they’ve never been heel. Kairi Sane specifically never had and so I tried to think of something for them to do. It needed to be somewhat heelish but they haven’t — there’s no reason for them to go full murder-mode heel yet, you know what I mean? And they were already called The Kabuki Warriors. So for me, it wasn’t a big stretch. I hear ‘kabuki’, I think of old school Kabuki, there’s the mist. For me, that was my train of thought. But then I had this weird idea in my head. I said, ‘Is it weird? I mean, I don’t want to assume all Japanese wrestlers [can] do the mist.’ You don’t want to stereotype either so I wanted — I had to dance around how to ask Asuka about this and finally I just said, ‘Let me just go ask her. Let’s see what she says,’ and she got super excited about it and she told me she had did it once before and I was like, ‘I knew it!’ And so now, I got to figure out — and I don’t want to give away the secrets of the mist but there’s certain items you have to purchase because of it, and so, and that was a very entertaining conversation in and of itself. But it came off super well. That was fun.”
Shane Helms was furloughed from WWE on April 15th, and he was brought back for Survivor Series. He is now on the RAW brand as a producer where he will likely have even more of an influence for a long time to come.
Kairi Sane decided to move back to Japan where she is now working as an ambassador and trainer for the company. WWE was able to keep the Pirate Princess under their umbrella, but she is no longer competing.
Thanks to Post Wrestling for the quote