We now have a better idea of what Asuka’s immediate future in wrestling looks like after her loss to IYO SKY at WWE Backlash.
Moments after The Empress of Tomorrow fell victim to the Over the Moonsault this past Saturday night, she embraced her former protégé with tears in her eyes and waved goodbye to the crowd that had gathered inside the Benchmark International Arena in Tampa, Florida.
Speculation quickly spread like wildfire that fans had witnessed Asuka’s final match in WWE, and the abundance of subsequent online tributes from her fellow superstars only added fuel to said fire. The Empress did travel to Knoxville, Tennessee for Monday night’s edition of WWE Raw, where she appeared in a backstage segment with IYO SKY.
We love to see all the LOVE between these two!! 🫶@Iyo_SkyWWE | @WWEAsuka pic.twitter.com/jHpzMC0x44
— WWE (@WWE) May 12, 2026
Sans her heel face paint, Asuka once again gave SKY a hug and expressed her pride over the competitor that she had become. IYO said no matter how much they fight, they will always be family. Before leaving the arena, Asuka said she would see IYO soon. Lead commentator Michael Cole later said that her future is “up in the air.”
Asuka’s apparent hiatus from WWE comes just a few weeks after her friend and longtime tag team partner Kairi Sane was among the more than 30 superstars who were cut from the roster. Some started to connect some dots over the weekend, but Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful Select says there’s no connection to make.
“Fightful can confirm that [Asuka] will be taking some time off,” Ross Sapp reported shortly before Raw went on the air Monday night. “We’re told this has been planned for a while and isn’t related to the recent cuts.”
What else has been said about Asuka following WWE Backlash?
Asuka & Kairi Sane | Netflix
Mike Johnson of PWInsider said earlier on Monday that he caught wind of a story about Asuka needing to head back to Japan for an extended period of time to deal with an undisclosed family matter, but that has not been confirmed.
In the hours after her match at Backlash, Dave Meltzer of The Wrestling Observer reported that Asuka was beginning the process of winding down her in-ring career.
“The story I heard is that she is semi-retired,” Meltzer said on Wrestling Observer Radio this past Sunday morning. “I haven’t really gotten an exact meaning of what semi-retired means… So I don’t know if that means she’s going to Japan and still wrestle. I don’t know if that means she’s going to still do stuff here and there, but I was told semi-retired.”
It was later reported by Sean Ross Sapp that Asuka signed a long-term extension with WWE in the summer of 2024. The exact length of that deal is unknown, but most contracts signed at that time had a duration of five years.
Coming out of Backlash, the belief amongst those that Ross Sapp spoke to within WWE was that Asuka had not yet wrestled her final match. There’s currently no timeline for her return.
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