Last time in the last Best and Worst of NXT UK: Piper Niven defeated Jazzy Gabert, but with a surprising assist from Rhea Ripley. 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 October 17, 2019.
Best: Science Versus Religion
Soviet Super Soldier Ilja Dragunov fighting Tall Weird Jesus Saxon Huxley is a fun premise to begin with. Huxley gets a little more offense than you’d expect from a guy who’s never won a match on this show, but he’s a great big dude, so I was pretty much willing to accept it.
The real point of this segment, though, is the ongoing implication that Imperium is trying to recruit Dragunov. Alexander Wolfe, a trustworthy man who just wants to be Ilja’s friend on the up-and-up, comes out to watch the fight with Huxley and seems impressed. Then as Dragunov’s leaving the ring, the Imperium music hits and Aichner and Barthel come out early for their match, just so they can star at Ilja and let him stare at them.
There’s so many ways this story could go, and that makes it fun to watch. Dragunov could legit join Imperium, but obviously that would be the boring option. He could also feud with them because he refuses to join, like Roddy Strong did with the Undisputed Era before joining the Undisputed Era. I think the ideal, though, is more of a Daniel Bryan Wyatt Family situation, where Dragunov joins Imperium for a minute and then turns on them from within. Put on that black track suit just long enough to get close enough to WALTER to take the big man down. That’s where the money is.
Okay I Guess: No More Monkeys Pooping On The Mat
After their stare-down with Ilja, Fabian Aichner and Marcel Barthel take a minute to soundly defeat babyface monsters and alleged ring-poopers The Hunt. Fabian and Marcel are really, really good at wrestling, and Primate and Wild Boar are certainly good at the weird kind of wrestling they do (flying double headbutts aside), but I’m still having a hard time getting emotionally invested in the dominant assholes dominating everybody in an assholish manner.
Especially with what happens in the main event of this episode, I’m not quite sure what the Imperium Tag Guys are being built up for. I guess time will tell, and in the meantime all who defecate on the mat beware.
And Meanwhile, The Drama
We get backstage footage from last week, when Piper Niven follows Rhea Ripley out the door to thank her for the help against Jazzy Gabert. Rhea angrily proclaims that she doesn’t like Piper, but she really, really doesn’t like Jinny and Jazzy, so they should probably go ahead and team up against them.
I’m here for that match, and I’m here in general for Rhea Ripley being an angry tweener on both NXTs. Everything about her still says heel, but she’s opposing Jinny and Jazzy here, and Io Shirai and Shayna Baszler over on NXT Domestic (not to mention her fellow muscular tweener Bianca Belair). It works for her. Her anger spans the globe, and is increasingly easy to root for.
Jordan Devlin comes out to the ring with a mic just to talk about how he’s the greatest (but he doesn’t actually call a press conference about it, which makes him slightly less of a heel than Noam Dar). When he starts putting down Tyler Bate and Dave Mastiff, Dave shows up in cute brown shoes and gets in his face, Jordan throws the first strike, but Dave takes him down and stands tall. This is a match I’m looking forward to.
Best: The Importance Of Being Plucky
Nina Samuels seems to think she can build up her own reputation with an easy win against a much smaller and much less experienced opponent, but the Two-Winged Angel Xia Brookside has that most elusive wrestling power on her side: plucky babyface heart. Nina dominates for much of the match, but Xia has no intention of staying down.
This match made me feel like I’m starting to grasp Nina Samuels’ character on a level that eluded me for a long time. It’s not that she’s a high-toned theatrical glamour queen, it’s that she wants you to think she is, but when push comes to shove she’s a rough-and-tumble brawler who’s just passing herself off as high culture (as opposed to Jinny, who is high culture but in a violent way).
Anyway, this was a solid match, and I liked Xia getting what was almost a fluke win with the quick cradle pin. Nina may have years on Xia, but Xia’s the one with a bright future ahead of her, and I enjoy watching her on the rise.
Best/Worst: Nice Lads Finish Last
I can’t deny that this is a great match, although I’m conflicted about how it ends. After the long reign of the Grizzled Young Veterans, superlative heels that they were, we only got about six weeks of lovable babyface tag champs Mark Andrews and Flash Morgan Webster before Gallus stepped up and took the belts.
They’ve done a good job, though, of making Gallus intimidating, even though Wolfgang is a big soft nerd in a unicorn singlet, and Mark Coffey looks like Scottish Joey Ryan. They’re still a hell of a lot bigger than Andrews and Webster, who they smash in twelve minutes for the belts. Sure the boys get some offense in, but this was one of those instances where plucky babyface heart was not enough.
I’m really unclear about is where the tag division goes from here. The only other babyface team with any prestige is Moustache Mountain, and Tyler and Trent haven’t really tagged together since they get individually brutalized by Imperium. Speaking of Imperium, Barthel and Aichner are getting a strong build, as we saw earlier in this episode.
Are we going to get a heel versus heel Tag Team Title feud? Or is it possible that Gallus will turn face against the far more evil Imperium? Scottish rednecks could actually be ideal heroes to cheer against snobbish continental pseudo-fascists, but I feel like Gallus will need a little distance from taking the belts away from the nice Welsh boys before that works. Time will tell, and I’m probably getting ahead of myself, especially considering rematches are still the norm in the UK division. So what comes next is probably this again in a couple of weeks.
That’s all for this installment. Join me next week when Trent Seven faces Noam Dar again. Also coming soon: A kid named A-Kid!
