Last time in the last Best and Worst of NXT UK: Mark Andrews fought Kassius Ohno, Xia Brookside tried to get a fair shot against Jinny, and the tag team half of Imperium beat up some guys. 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 24, 2019.
Middling: Shoes Gotta Have It
I dunno man, I just thought this match was mostly pretty boring. Noam Dar’s character of just being the worst guy you know is pretty good, but Kenny Williams’ character of being somewhat better than Noam could use some fleshing out. I liked the stomping-faces-in-the-mud and here’s-a-chair-but-nope stuff that set up this match, but once they were in the ring it was just a red guy and a blue guy of similar sizes just… wrestling. I liked Kenny taunting Dar by mussing his hair, but in all honesty I yawned more than once during this match.
The ending was fun, at least, with Williams losing a shoe, and Dar getting caught about to attack him with his own shoe, which leads to throwing it to distract the ref so Noam can hit a low blow and win. That’s some good heeling from the Scottish Supernova, but I need more than that. I need it to be that much fun the whole way through. Maybe I’m asking too much. I’m the only person I know who was disappointed by House of X #1, so I may just be having an attack of high standards today.
Worst: Gym Lads
The “Worst” on this section isn’t for the Grizzled Young Veterans. They’re great, especially when they’re just being cocky assholes like they are to Radzi in this segment. The “Worst” is for the NXT UK Tag Team Division, which is second only to the WWE Women’s Tag Team Division when it comes to forgetting the titles exist for long periods, suddenly remembering, having one match that ends in a DQ, and forgetting again. Actually, this is kind of a widespread problem with NXT UK. They film weeks and weeks of shows at once, and have very infrequent TakeOvers, so it always feels like they’re actively avoiding the entire idea of important matches for as long as they can. I think there’s maybe been one match for each title on weekly TV this year. When you only have two or three TakeOvers in that same year, that just means there are barely any title matches at all. Even this weeks main event wasn’t a title match, despite the fact that we all knew the Champion would win anyway. I don’t know, if you want the belts to matter, maybe fight over them more often.
Best: Six For Gold
Now this, this was great. It was weird to hear commentary keep saying “the first ever six-woman tag match” when six woman tag matches are such a cliche in the WWE women’s division that we kind of dread them on most shows. Here, it really worked. The storyline between Toni Storm and Kay Lee Ray intersected and intertwined with the storyline between Xia Brookside, Jinny, and Jazzy Gabert, with Piper Niven filling the last slot as an all purpose physically imposing babyface.
As all good multi-person matches should (and not that many in WWE do), this plays off of current storylines while also teasing possible future storylines. KLR does her best to avoid Toni, but keeps beating the hell out of Xia just for fun. Everyone demonstrates that they can pretty much take Jinny apart as long as Jazzy doesn’t interfere. Piper in particular may actually be a match for Jazzy, but there’s plenty of time to get to that. One day Toni may have to defend her title against Jazzy, or at least against Jinny again but this time with Jazzy’s help, and she may need allies of her own when that time comes. Once again, Jazzy and Jinny take out Xia to win the match, but this time Xia at least has Toni and Piper to pick her up and dust her off. And while Jinny and Jazzy celebrate, Kay Lee sneaks off by herself, because she’s not interesting in having friends.
Best: Nein Ate Seven
Trent Seven is great. The show opened with him in the parking lot talking about how he’s here to stand up to Imperium, and he’ll do it by himself if he has to, because Tyler’s still recovering from their attack, and Pete’s busy in NXT Domestic. I’m not exactly sure why somebody like Mark Andrews or Travis Banks wouldn’t show up to help, but Trent all alone is a great look for him, so I can’t really object.
Trent is a man in his late 30s. He’s obviously in great shape, in a dadbod sort of way, but he looks tired every moment of his life. So he’s not the kind of wrestler you ever expect to play the “babyface who won’t stay down even when he’s obviously defeated” role, and that just makes it more dramatic when he does. There’s an argument to be made (and it’s an argument I’ve had) that it often takes WALTER longer than it should to put goes away. He seems indomitable, but his matches tend to seem like a struggle before they end. I can see that point of view, and it would kind of make sense if they’d given him more squashes. If WALTER usually won more quickly, that would just make this match more dramatic for his failure to do that. WALTER wins, because of course he does, but he basically has to murder Trent Seven to do it.
I’m curious where the story goes from here. British Strong Style are too important on this brand for Trent to just go away with his tail between his legs and let this be the end of it, but Imperium’s reign of dominance clearly isn’t over yet. Hopefully Trent licks his wounds, either recruits some new allies or rallies his previous ones, and we end up back here with a new result. And if it leads to Trent Seven as WWE United Kingdom Champion, that would be a pretty cool ending. Also a pretty cool beginning to a Trent Seven/Pete Dunne feud, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
That’s all for this installment. Join me next week, when Bomber Dave Mastiff will be in the ring with a live mic, plus probably some matches.
