Last time in the last Best and Worst of NXT UK: Piper Niven defeated Rhea Ripley, and Imperium devastated Mustache Mountain, forcing Trent Seven to watch as WALTER brutally beat Tyler Bate. Click here to watch the show on WWE Network. If you’d like to read previous installments of the Best and Worst of NXT UK, click right here. Follow With Spandex on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter if you want.
And now, the Best and Worst of NXT UK from July 10, 2019.
Worst: Levels Of Reality Removed
I don’t mean to expose the business here, but I think we all know that NXT UK doesn’t take place in quite the same world that we live in. NXT UK takes place in a world where the events of its individual TV episodes happen a week apart from each other, instead of being taped in big blocks. That means it also takes place in a world where the Download Music Festival is like a month long, at least. Can you imagine how dirty all those metalheads must be by week three? And like all wrestling shows, NXT UK also takes place in a world where doing violence to other people with your bare hands isn’t just a reasonable choice in certain extreme circumstances, it’s a choice almost everyone makes, with the biggest different being why they make it, and whether or not we’re meant to respect their reasons.
Take Ashton Smith, for instance. He hasn’t gotten a lot of character time on NXT UK, but it’s pretty clear that he’s one of those guys who participates in the violence of wrestling out of a desire to prove himself. He needs to show the world that he’s more than just a mashup of Ricochet and Cesaro, who also kind of looks like Jesse Williams but has a tattoo of a necklace. He needs to show the world that he’s a potential champion, and socially acceptable violence is his path to that goal.
Ilja Dragunov doesn’t need those sorts of reasons. He does violence because he was made for it. He’s a red-eyed monster from the cartoon version of Russia that existed in the movies and wrestling of the 1980s (and which might not actually be so different from the real Russia that exists in 2019). Ilja Dragunov looks like a flawed clone of Ivan Drago, and considering the names I’m pretty sure that’s on purpose. Despite the necklace tat, Ashton Smith seems more or less like a guy who could exist in the real world, whereas Ilja is a cartoon devil. I don’t know where that takes him in this company, but I’m curious about it.
That curiosity isn’t enough for me to give this match a best, though. It’s a pretty good first match on a good episode of NXT UK, but it’s still a pretty boring guy and a ridiculous cartoon fighting for no particular reason. Taking out Smith makes Dragunov looks strong, sure, but I don’t even know where he goes next. What can a cartoon monster do on a brand that’s currently being dominated by humorless fascist heels? Time will tell, and I feel like it’s a problem that Ilja is charismatic and weird enough to overcome if given half a chance. We’ll just have to see.
Promo Time: Mudbound
All Xia Brookside wants is for the violence to be fair. She knows she’s great at what she does, but she can’t prove it if Jinny keeps siccing the monstrous Jazzy Gabert on her at every turn. So as she explains to Radzi backstage, she’s looking forward to a singles match against Jinny next week, in which she’ll use fair, sanctioned violence to get revenge for the unfair, unsanctioned violence that Jinny has been deploying Jazzy to carry out. Hard to believe Jazzy won’t show up to throw a muscular wrench into that plan, however.
Nina Samuels doesn’t seem to care about violence at all. She just fights to get attention, because she knows she’s a star. She even goes out into the Download Festival to find fans that agree with her, but fancy lady that she is, she has a pretty rough time with all that mud. I’ll be honest, Nina Samuels has been my least favorite member of the NXT UK Women’s Division from the start, because she just seems like such an annoying entitled white lady. What segments like this drive home, however, is that “Annoying Entitled White Lady” is a gimmick that she’s doing very knowingly, so I have to admit that does have heel potential. It’s just a shame all the faces in the division are too busy with Kay Lee, Rhea, and Jinny to make time to show up and knock Nina down into that mud.
Best: Like Taking Candy
Toni Storm and Candy Floss are friends, but they’re also wrestlers, which means means sometimes you have to get violent with your friends. This is the ultimate face-vs-face match, with Toni not really giving it her all not because she doesn’t care, but because she’s having fun with Candy and there’s no need to rush. It’s still violent, being wrestling, but they’re really just playing. They don’t really want to hurt each other, even though they know the sport requires it sooner or later.
Things get a little more serious once Candy gets a couple of near falls, leading Toni to realize that playtime is over and she needs to prove she’s still the champion for a reason. The Storm Zero makes quick work of Candy Floss, and the two remain friendly. Neither blames the other for the violence done, because that’s how it works in the ring.
Outside the ring is another matter. As Candy Floss is leaving, Kay Lee Ray appears in street clothes and beats her down on the stage. Here’s some violence that’s unauthorized, unexpected, and to Toni Storm, unacceptable. It’s not about the sport for KLR, and it’s certainly not about Candy Floss. It’s about proving to Toni that Ray’s violence is swift, brutal, and impatient to show itself. It’s about the NXT UK Women’s Championship, which Toni has and Kay Lee is the Number One Contender for. It’s about showing Toni that when they get in the ring to fight for that belt, it won’t be the kind of friendly match she had with Candy. It will be real violence, with real consequences (you know, in kayfabe).
Best: It’s Our Mat
I’ve been collecting the promos and whatnot into one section of this recap every week, but I had to change that this time around because this promo is so great that I needed to give it its own best. Trent Seven has always been one of wrestling’s most unusual tag team partners. He knows that Tyler Bate is the star of Mustache Mountain, and he’s never been jealous or weird about it. Trent’s bigger, older, and far outside of the Boy Hero archetype that Tyler so effortlessly embodies. If Tyler Bate was He-Man, Trent Seven would be Man-At-Arms. If Tyler was Robin, Trent would be Red Tornado (that’s a Young Justice joke, for the record). Trent’s a great wrestler in his own right, don’t get me wrong, but he’s the support.
That just makes it all the more moving when Trent has to come to the ring by himself and talk about how Tyler is in the hospital after the extreme violence that was done to him by WALTER last week. He points out the hypocrisy of Imperium, talking about the true glory of wrestling while just getting themselves over by any means necessary. He calls them out for talking about how they’re going to clean up NXT UK while claiming “the mat is sacred,” when everyone knows NXT UK started with British Strong Style, and mat has been theirs all along.
Imperium wants to pretend that their brand of violence is better, or somehow sacred, because of their polish and proficiency at committing it. Trent Seven knows, and doesn’t hesitate to point out, that their violence is just like everyone else’s, except meaner. If any violence can be called sacred, in these fictional stories or otherwise, it’s violence in defense of one’s family. That’s what Trent is here to do, and even if he has to do it alone, he’s going to take it to WALTER, one-on-one, and you can’t listen to this promo without believing it’s going to be the fight of Walter’s life.
Best: Specifically, This Mat Belongs To Stocky Bearded Men
After that moving speech by Trent Seven, we get a main event where violence only exists for its own sake. The Hunt are babyfaces, but Bomber Dave Mastiff is the only guy in this Six-Man Tag Match who seems to have anything like an ethical code. He’s an old-fashioned guy who looks like he grew up in the Lonely Mountain, and he just wants to do some old-fashioned British wrestling. Wild Boar and Primate are animals who live in the woods and eat pine cones or whatever. Violence means nothing to them. Then you have Gallus, three Scottish good ol’ boys who just want to start shit to start shit.
The problem with heel/face storytelling in wrestling, by the way, is that I can’t figure out why Imperium wouldn’t go directly after Gallus. WALTER and crew say they want to clean up NXT UK and get rid of the riff raff. Gallus are the epitome of riff raff, and three of the dirtiest guys in the company. These two factions should be bitter enemies, except that they’re both bad guys, and that means they can only have real feuds with good guys. In wrestling, it’s never really about your stated goals, it’s about whether the violence that you do is acceptable or unacceptable in the context of a wrestling world.
This match was a good showcase for the socially acceptable but still pretty hard-hitting violence of Dave Mastiff. The Hunt aren’t bad at what they do, but they were mostly here to increase the general level of chaos. This match was really about proving that Gallus still have a purpose to serve as big mean shitkickers in a world where Imperium exists and immediately matters more than them. It also served to show how great Bomber Dave is, even when he’s part of a team that has no chance of winning.
Sometimes you do violence because you enjoy it. Sometimes you do it because you have something to prove. And sometimes, you do it because it’s your only option. All of these things can be wrestling, but which you’re doing the most says a lot about the wrestler you are. Some of the most interesting wrestlers, like Toni Storm, Trent Seven, and Bomber Dave Mastiff, mix these motivations together in ways that feel fresh and new, despite the lengthy history of the sport.
That’s all for this week. Join me next Wednesday, when Xia Brookside goes up against Jinny, and Mark Andrews takes on Kassius Ohno.
