Last time in the last Best and Worst of NXT UK: Gallus won the Tag Team Championship from Mark Andrews and Flash Morgan Webster. With Imperium. 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 24, 2019.
Best: Jolly Wally
I predicted last week that Gallus might turn face to feud with Imperium, and hey it looks like I’m getting better at this sort of thing! Not that Wolfgang and the Coffey Brothers are suddenly nice people, but the audience is definitely behind them when they interrupt Imperium to make fun of their catchphrase and point out that Gallus has been here since the beginning and Imperium just decided to show up and start lording it over everybody like they love wrestling the most and do it the best.
Joe Coffey also bestows upon WALTER the nickname Jolly Wally, which sounds like what Stan Lee would have called WALTER if he was a Marvel artist in the 1960s, but the crowd immediately starts chanting it, and I feel like it might stick around, which is grim for WALTER.
Wolfgang also says “You’re either Gallus or you’re against us,” and the Imperium guys are all like “You let that guy talk?” I think this is going to be a fun feud, not just for the Tag Team Championship, but as a way to have different numbers of guys fighting in different combinations. Both Coffeys and Wolfgang versus Imperium minus WALTER is going to be a great match, for example. And Alexander Wolfe may have a key role to play, as the most Gallus-like member of Imperium.
Worst: Great Heels, Bad Looks
I love the Grizzled Young Veterans, and it was great to see them get a solid win to set them back on the road to relevance now that they’ve left the Tag Title picture behind. I just wish their win wasn’t against the only two black men on the roster, who have suddenly become a tag team for no reason that’s explained.
I’m not saying Ashton Smith and Oliver Carter shouldn’t lose. They absolutely should lose, given their individual track records, being a new team, and facing the former champions. It’s just a shame that these guys don’t have anything better to do, as rare men of color on an extremely white roster, besides job. I mean sure, Ashton Smith isn’t particularly charismatic or exciting, but Oliver Carter seems to have a lot going for him, not to mention he got an announced debut that made it seem like he would matter, and he’s been losing ever since.
But all that mess aside, the Grizzled Young Veterans look great here. And I didn’t mind when Mark Andrews and Flash Morgan Webster ran in to stop the post match beatdown. The current Tag Champs have a new feud, and I have no objections to running the two previous champion teams against each other again for a bit.
Best…?: The Second Best Match To End In A Draw This Week
Travis Banks versus Ligero? I was making fun of this match as soon as I heard it was happening. A matchup between the boring English Luchador wannabe and the guy whose entire personality is “from New Zealand” didn’t sound thrilling on paper. But as his match with WALTER showed, Banks can really go when given a chance, and that was on display here too.
Ligero looked the best I’ve seen him look in this match as well, and the whole thing was fast paced and exciting. There was a real sense of two talented midcard guys who are pretty evenly matched just throwing everything they have at each other without letting up. That made it a lot of fun to watch. Then it ended in a draw, because they both pinned each other simultaneously. A weird finish, but I didn’t hate it.
It leaves a big question mark in the air, though. These two guys who can sometimes be boring had a really entertaining match today. Because of how it ended, they’re almost certain to have another match in a week or two. Can they possibly make that one as good as this one? Honestly, I’m rooting for them.
Best: British Vlog Style
Actual Youth Xia Brookside cuts a promo backstage that has one of those “REC” camcorder frames put over it in post, as though somebody her age would ever be talking to a video camera instead of a phone! She even does a Insta-style filter effect on her name, which is totally something camcorders can do.
Xia’s effortlessly charismatic, though, and the promo overcomes the comical trappings. It’s all about how she almost won the Battle Royal to become Number One Contender to the NXT UK Women’s Championship — she was THIS CLOSE — and then Kay Lee Ray stole that win from her and went on to become champion. She acknowledges that she hasn’t been at the top of the UK Women’s Division thus far, but vows to get there. Xia may not have reached her full potential as a wrestler yet, but I think this is a main even feud she can handle, and her rise to face Kay Lee should be fun to watch.
Fellow Young Person Tyler Bate is also hanging around backstage, and he’s a little vague about his future in NXT UK, but he puts over both the brand and its newest potential star, A-Kid, who debuts next week.
Best: Noam Around The World
The Noam Dar/Trent Seven feud has been great from jump, and this was exactly the match they needed to (probably) end it. Dar is an amazing heel — not a monster like WALTER or a thug like Mark Coffey, just an intensely punchable loud-mouthed prick in the mold of Seth Rollins back when he was playing to his strengths.
Trent Seven is an equally great babyface, but he hasn’t always gotten to live up to his full potential in NXT UK. Tyler Bate was always the superhero of British Strong Style, and Pete Dunne was the bad boy. Trent Seven was the solid, dependable older guy that held things together. But now Bate and Dunne are busy elsewhere, and Seven is British Strong Style.
And it’s very much on behalf of British Strong Style that Trent defeats Noam in this hard-fought match. He does Pete and Tyler’s moves as well as his own, working Dar’s fingers and hitting the Bang & Bop. If Noam hadn’t insulted British Strong Style, Trent never would have got so angry at him, and here is where Noam learns to regret it. Trent isn’t going to call a press conference to announce that he’s the best (and let’s be real, if he did it would be about Tyler Bate, not him), but Noam Dar did that, and then Trent proved he was better than him. It’s a good look for the Silver Fox of NXT UK.
That’s all for this installment. Join me next week when A-Kid debuts, much to the excitement of Tyler Bate!
My god, the jolliness.
