Previously on the Best and Worst of NXT UK: The tournament to crown the first NXT UK Women’s Champion began, “Tyson T-Bone” debuted and picked a fight with the biggest guy on the roster, and Jordan Devlin taught me that it’s okay to hate Ligero.
Note: I got a little behind on these reports thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday and NXT UK dropping two new episodes every week, so we’re going to do four episodes this week and the same next week. Then it’s back to our regularly scheduled programming. Thanks! SO MANY WRESTLINGS.
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.
And now, the catch-up edition of the Best and Worst of NXT UK, covering episodes nine through twelve, originally aired on November 21 and November 28, 2018.
Best: Xia Rhea, Cha Cha Cha
Up first in the NXT UK Women’s Championship tournament for this batch of shows is The Switchbabe Rhea Ripley ripping through Xia Brookside, who is what happened when Robbie Brookside married and had children with a snow cone. Xia is basically a My Little Pony as an inspirational scrappy babyface, so she’s a perfect opponent for Ripley, the tournament ringer who looks like she could jam everyone else in the field together and rip them in half at once.
If you’re still getting familiar with these opponents and don’t have any context for them outside of NXT UK, Ripley participated in the first Mae Young Classic tournament as a happy-go-lucky 20-year old who described herself as, “a bit of a tough one,” who likes to “do the strong sort-of style.” She made it to the second round, but was eliminated by Dakota Kai, possibly the least aggressive person in the tournament. She returned in 2018 having embraced her inner Pete Dunne, adding studs to every item of clothing she owns, and realizing her shoulders are wider than most pairs of female wrestlers standing shoulder-to-shoulder so she should probably kick their asses. That attitude shift got her to the semi-finals, where she only lost because she got stuck on the side of the brackets with Io Shirai.
The NXT UK Women’s Championship tournament is another story, though, because the field doesn’t have any murderous Joshi legends in it, and she’s getting paired against people she can truck. Xia’s got a great career ahead of her, but nobody knows the failings of a good-hearted 20-year old who’s just happy to be here like Rhea Ripley. One Riptide later, and Xia’s done.
Best: Storm Rolls Through
The lesser of the two first round matches this week pits Mae Young Classic winner Toni Storm, aka the person we all know is going to be in the finals of the tournament whether she wins it or not, versus a can in the form of “The White Witch” Isla Dawn. I really want to love Isla Dawn because I love her look and the idea of a mystical Earth witch wrestler in the women’s division, but she’s gotta start doing some witchy shit soon. She’s still just “presenting.” Not in the Bobby Lashley pets mating kind of way, she’s just got nothing in her presentation tank beyond holding her arms out and saying, “here I am!”
I also want to like her wrestling, because a Lady Aleister Black is something I could be extremely into, but she’s visibly slower and less impactful than Storm, and her kickboxing stuff looks closer to CM Punk’s than Black’s. Again, she’s got a big upside, but she’s at the point in her career and character right now where yeah, Toni Storm’s just going to lay her out in about four minutes and move on. Is what it is.
Meanwhile, In The Men And Wild Animals Division
Mark Andrews (Mandrews) gets a win over Mike Hitchman (Mitchman) with the Shoot Star Press (Xuxa). I’m continually disappointed that NXT UK has a guy named “Wild Boar,” and he doesn’t win matches with a spear while Nigel McGuiness yells, “BOAR! BOAR! BOAR!”
Pop-punk Sami Zayn is obviously going to be one of the biggest stars on the show, but I am reaching the breaking point when it comes to learning the dumb first draft local indie promotion names everyone has for their moves, and WWE’s decision to stick with them. I think “Stundog Millionaire” is the laziest thing I’ve ever heard, and a pretty clear indicator that you started using it (after you saw Dragon Kid do it) in 2008. Just say it’s a stunner reversal to a suplex, man. I don’t need to spend my life learning that a guy calls his delayed vertical suplex the Marton Mere Local Nature Reserve because he comes from Blackpool, nor do I think it would be better if it was called Delayed Bartical Simpsplex.
Also, huge continuing LOL that PAC and Wade Barrett don’t have WWE jobs right now but THE WILD BOAR is on weekly TV. And while I’m thinking about it, is it weird that they explain he lost his front teeth “trying to break up a bar fight?” At least Joseph Conners lost half his ears getting ATTACKED in a bar. That’s tough-sounding. The Boar story sounds like he had nothing to do with it, interjected, and got his ass kicked. Just say he lost them in a bar fight.
Worst: The Raindrops The Raindrops The Raindrops The Raindrops The Raindrops The Raindrops The Raindrops The Raindrops The Raindrops The Raindrops The Raindrops The Raindrops
Speaking of guys with unfortunate wrestling names, Eddie Dennis has another squash this week against a guy named Jack Starz, who I’m pretty sure is the lead singer for Radiohead. Imagine working this hard for this long at what you love to become a legitimate, known professional wrestler and get a spot on WWE television for your name to be “Jack Starz.”
You know those stories about Andre the Giant, and how hard his life was because of his size? How uncomfortable he was on international flights, and how he couldn’t find peace or comfort anywhere? Imagine how hard it is for NXT UK’s 6-foot-5 monster Eddie Dennis. The poor guy has to bend down slightly going through certain doorways, and his feet hang off the end of normal sized beds. “Large” shirts don’t fit him even though he’s skinny because his torso’s so long. It must be hell on Earth for the gentle giant.
Worst: Radzi Pulls A Tom Phillips
British media personality Radzi Chinyanganya (aka Huey Freeman) has been handling backstage interview duties since the show began, but I guess they just figured out that the interview guy shouldn’t be taller than all the wrestlers. Remember when Tom Phillips was doing backstage interviews and had to pop a weird wide stance so he wouldn’t be taller than the wrestlers? Same thing here, only now the backstage interviews happen in front of a green screen with Radzi standing in a hole. Or the wrestlers standing on apple crates.
Radzi is now child-sized no matter who he’s standing next to. Zack Gibson is 6-foot-3 and Radzi might as well be lying on the ground. Is anyone at home watching like, “I like this show because I bet Sid Scala is six or seven inches taller than me?”
Best: Every Single One Of Us, The Devlin Side
Episode 9’s main event pits Jordan Devlin against Ligero, a man he accurately shaded on a previous episode for being a British dude pretending to be a Mexican luchador pretending to be Sami Zayn pretending to be El Generico. Ligero getting a featured spot on an ongoing WWE television show is some straight-up “Zack Sabre Jr. and Kota Ibushi won’t sign so I guess TJ Perkins is our first Cruiserweight Champion” shit, and my only complaint about the match is that Ligero did the same scrappy babyface back-and-forth bit with Devlin as he does with heels WAY worse and WAY less important to the UK ecosystem than Devlin. Like, Ligero would have this match against anyone, and he’d still look like Naked Albino Psicosis.
Devlin gets a win that probably should’ve been stronger, and is doing excellent work as a completely unlikable douchebag version of Finn Bálor. He’s headed into a match with Pete Dunne for the NXT UK Championship, so he probably should’ve stomped Ligero into an unrecognizable stain of vinyl and Highspots receipts, but at least he won.
Worst: The Fakest Attack Of The Year
Before we move on to the next episode, I’ve got to call out the fakest backstage “injury” I’ve seen since John Cena put Wade Barrett under a cart and dropped a bunch of chairs onto the cart.
The Coffey Brothers and Wolfgang jump Trent Seven backstage, and the idea is that they’re supposed to be crushing his leg with a turned-over production box. The only problem is that you can see a second box wedged under it, with Coffey’s foot holding everything up so Seven’s leg has zero pressure on it. Seven’s selling it with everything he’s got, screaming like Jake the Snake just attached a cobra to his arm. And you know, it’s wrestling, so if that was it, I could just say, “okay, that wasn’t very good, but the idea is that they hurt Seven.”
Except at the end of the segment, Coffey takes his foot away and Seven rolls over … and the boxes stay where they are.
Bruh. Did nobody notice how bad this looked in the like four months they had to edit it?
Anyway,
Best: Kai Rhea, Cha Cha Cha
Opening Episode 10 (aka “epi-ten”) is a thematically important second-round match in the NXT UK Women’s Championship tournament: Rhea Ripley versus Dakota Kai, the woman who eliminated her in the first Mae Young Classic tournament. It’s a nice follow-up for Rhea. She came in as a naive 20-year old and got eliminated by Kai, so in the NXT UK Women’s tournament she defeats a naive 20-year old, then gets to defeat Dakota Kai. They couldn’t have written it better.
It’s also worth noting how much more Ripley has evolved in this short time than Kai, who has gotten way more television time as part of NXT Domestic. Really all we know about Kai as a WWE character is that she’s from New Zealand, she’s kind of a coward, and she likes to kick people. NXT UK Kai is a little better than NXT Kai, I think, as her kicks take more of the focus in her offensive attacks, and she’s allowed to focus more and compete a little harder without having to constantly show ass to more powerful heels. It’s also a good intersection of characters from Kai’s perspective, as she’s literally JUST gotten her shit together and decided to help the Black Lotus Tribe fight off the Four Horsewomen of MMA stateside.
This was probably the best match of the tournament so far, which is great, because Toni Storm’s already gotten the biggest rub from winning the Mae Young and pinning Io goddamn Shirai on WWE’s first all-women’s pay-per-view. Focusing the tournament on Ripley so you can have more than one believable wrestler in your division is a great call. I also appreciate Ripley countering Kai’s weird Canadian Destroyer Backstabber by just standing up. If she’d done it a second later, Kai would’ve fallen over and brainbustered herself. Brianbustered? Brainbusted. She would’ve gotten a concussion is what I’m saying.
How’s Pete Campbell’s Upcoming Match With Joe Coffey Going To Go?
I guess we always did think Pete was going to get killed by a bear.
Best: Joseph Conners With The Least Threatening Heel Turn Of All Time
Joseph Conners teams up with the only animal-themed guy on the show worse than the Wild Boar, the “Muscle Cat” Saxon Huxley, to take on Mark Andrews and Flash Morgan Webster. They end up losing because Huxley thinks he can handle it on his own and doesn’t tag out, leading to Webster hitting a Destino, and then Mandrews landrews on him with a shooting star press. That joke’s not getting any better.
Anyway, Conners smartens up to the fact that his tag team partner is terrible and kicks his ass after the match. I was into it until the finishing touch, in which Conners goes for something spooky and threatening, but ends up doing that thing where you rap your knuckle on someone’s head and then slowly open your hand in their hair to make it feel like someone’s cracked an egg on them, but on his face?
I guess maybe he was doing that thing where you run your hand over a dead guy’s open eyes to close them, but he’s got no depth perception so nope, Conners just pointed at Huxley’s nostrils and then cracked an egg on his face. What a weirdo.
Best: Bomber Man
After that we get the long awaited for a week showdown between the show’s hossiest hosses: “Bomber” Dave Mastiff vs. Tyson T-Bone. It’s the non-union British equivalent of Keith Lee vs. Lars Sullivan. It’s pretty fun while it lasts, because big guys clubbering each other is timeless, but of course Mastiff wins, because he’s important and T-Bone is a Streets Of Rage enemy with an even dumber name.
Best: Jinny, I’ve Got Your Number
In the main event of episode 10 we’ve got the final semi-finals match in the NXT UK Women’s Championship tournament, in which the only British person to make it to the second round, the Maxxinista Jinny, loses to Toni Storm. Honestly, they could’ve just given Storm a bye to the finals and I don’t think anyone would’ve minded. That could’ve been part of her prize for winning the Mae Young Classic tournament. Although I guess that’s impossible, as they tape 12 episodes at a time and even the announce team doesn’t know when the shows are supposed to be taking place. Vic Joseph mentions that Storm won the Mae Young “several months ago,” when she won it less than a month before this aired. But they also had Rhea Ripley show up to the Evolution red carpet with the NXT UK Women’s Championship on her shoulder, so I don’t think anyone knows what’s going on.
I do wish the tournament had involved more British wrestlers, or at least advanced more than one of them past the first round, but I also wish they’d launched NXT Australia instead, so it’s a wash. I’m not sure I’m into Jinny yet, but she gets better as her matches get longer. I really like her facebuster out of the corner, which is saying something, because the Divas Division turned the X-Factor into shorthand for “you don’t know how to wrestle so just hold someone’s hair and sit down.” I still think Nikki Bella should’ve just X-Factor’d, hair-mared, and one-footed-dropkicked Ronda Rousey to death at Evolution to prove that Divas Style is superior.
We all knew Storm was going to the finals (at LEAST), so +1 to Jinny and the match they laid out for making it look like she might pull off an upset. Like Isla Dawn, I hope once the title tournament’s over and the division gets going, we can focus more on Jinny’s actual character, instead of saying she’s something and then having her be the same kinda good back-and-forth wrestler everyone else is.
Best: Suplex Millie
Opening up Buffering Progress Chapter 11 is one of those “and the rest!” tag team matches featuring people who were eliminated earlier in a tournament. Xia Brookside teams with crowd favorite Millie McKenzie against Killer Kelly and Charlie Morgan, who looks like the tomboy character in every ’90s sports film, except canonically gay instead of implicitly. Morgan was trained by Paige and Paige’s brother and Sweet Saraya, so if WWE makes a movie about her they should call it Wrestling With Your Family.
This is all about Millie. When Millie’s not in the ring, the crowd’s chanting MIL-LIE MIL-LIE. When she’s in the ring, they have an entire greatest hits album of songs ready to sing about her. You can tell Pete Dunne trained her, too, because she’s got a hell of a ring awareness and she never sleeps through the mat work, always grabbing a limb or a digit and doing something to keep the match flowing. Without any disrespect to the other three women in the match, Millie’s the youngest one and at least twice as good as everyone else.
Still hoping we can move forward enough in the promotion to get Millie and Pete Dunne together as an actual tag team. Put them in the NXT Tag Team Championship tournament you probably taped back in 2015, you cowards.
Worst: Another Paragraph Of Eddie Dennis Jokes
The World’s Tallest Man Eddie Dennis gets another win against the seemingly hapless Stratford-Upon-Maven, who interrupted him for some reason during a previous interview to set this up. Dennis still works a methodical “big man” style like he’s Kane, except against an opponent who’s like two inches shorter than him. I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like this is all Eddie Dennis has got, and we’ve either got to like it or get used to it. He should start brain chopping people like the Great Khali.
The match is boring but fine, but hey, if you ever wanted to kill yourself trying to get through a match, enjoy the NXT UK crowd going “whoop!” for everything Ashton Smith does or doesn’t do. Imagine if you replaced the Full Sail crowd with the seagulls from Finding Nemo. Having enough trouble getting through Smith’s matches already, guys.
Worst: Muscle Cat Vs. The Egg Man
After that we get the long awaited for a week blowoff between “Muscle Cat” Saxon Huxley (who Nigel also calls the “ultrasonic inspector,” because they’re just writing this shit with a book of Mad Libs) and Joseph Conners. As you’ll recall from earlier in the column, Conners drew the ire of Huxley by making him think he had an invisible spider on his face when there was, in fact, no spider. SHIT’S ABOUT TO GET REAL.
This is like watching an FCW match between Lucky Cannon and a second, worse Lucky Cannon. I wouldn’t be sad if they launched Inspector Spacetime the Battle Cat back into outer space or whatever and stopped thinking dressing a Forgotten Sun like Lum the Invader Girl was worth TV time. Definitely the Mickey Keegan of the NXT UK set.
Best: Oh Thank God Pete Dunne’s Back
Brother, Pete Dunne is so good right now you could put him in the ring with a deaf dumb and blind 100-year old man and he’d get four stars out of it, so OF COURSE the match with Jordan Devlin is good. It’s not going out on much of a limb to say the best 10 matches in the first year of NXT UK’s existence will begin with “Pete Dunne vs.”
Devlin’s definitely carrying his end of the match as well, claiming he’s going to win the NXT UK Championship and change the name of the promotion to “NXT Ireland, featuring the UK.” It is pretty lame that they coded the division for the United Kingdom and then primarily filled the roster with people from everywhere else, as seen in the women’s tournament where the final four were one British lady, two Australians, and a New Zealander.
As per usual, Devlin’s got the match in hand until he decides to fuck with Dunne’s mouthguard. I swear, if I could offer one piece of advice to NXT UK’s roster, it’d be, “leave that shit in, it’s fine, he’s going to pull a Popeye freakout and kill you over it.” Devlin manages to get a superkick and a nearfall before Dunne’s Bare Tooth Power takes over, and poor Devlin gets a moonsault countered into a triangle choke and has his fingers broken for the finish. You’ve got to love that Dunne has turned “smushing your head with my thighs and ripping off your pinkie” into a believable and exciting championship finish.
Please bring in Cesaro for a Pete Dunne match sometime between now and immediately, please and thank you.
Worst: Sid Scala, President Of The Howdy Doody Circus Army
Sid Scala’s supposed to face Joe Coffey in this week’s opener, but he hasn’t been medically cleared to compete. How did he get injured, you ask?
Best: Switch And Bate
The good news for everybody except Joe Coffey is that his replacement is Tyler Bate, which is like the The Red Bee getting injured and subbing in Batman. In slightly less good news, the match is one of WWE’s modern specialties: the singles match between two members of opposing factions which goes for about 10 minutes and is super competitive, even though everyone in the building knows people are gonna run in and cause a disqualification. It’s good while it lasts, but someone should really explain to Coffey that if you’re gonna throw a discus lariat, you should throw a discus lariat, not spin in place, stop your momentum, and throw a clothesline. It’s like when Kevin Owens does the cannonball in the corner by sprinting across the ring, then stopping to do a forward flip.
Anyway, the point of this is for the Damned Numbers Game® to overwhelm Mustache Mountain until they get help from Pete Dunne, a man whose real last name is literally England, uniting British Strong Style on NXT UK television for the first time.
Good to finally have the Superfriends in the ring together again. Lupine Fiasco is boned.
Worst: Ligero Vs. Damn Bologna
Does Ligero have the Dragon Gate logo tattooed on his back? Followup question, does he work for free, because I feel like I’ve already seen fourteen Ligero matches in twelve episodes.
Best: Grizzled Young Veterans
After that we get Zack Gibson and Mr. Insurance Commercials James Drake against my man Kenny Williams, the Scottish KUSHIDA, and ersatz Bollywood Boy Amir Jordan. I continue to love every match Williams is in, because he’s a high-flying cruiserweight who actually has grace and balance. Watch him move. How often do you see those “oh he landed on his feet” spots where even talented guy stumble trying to stick the landing? When Williams does it, it looks second nature. When he jumps, he floats. I see you, Ken.
While I’m thinking about it, please enjoy Vic Joseph at the end of the above video announcing that Kenny Williams doing a running dropkick through the ropes, skinning the cat, then hitting the far ropes and diving again is “no wasted motion.” It’s LOTS OF WASTED MOTION, VIC. Vic Joseph screams “NO WASTED MOTION” about everything. I don’t think he knows what it means. I think he thinks it means “that was cool.” Brother would shout NO WASTED MOTION at the People’s Elbow. Again, pro wrestling is the one place where “wasted motion” has been established to make wrestling moves hurt more. Almost every move ever is full of wasted motion, unless you think you physically have to wave your hand in the air for a DDT to work, or whatever.
Anyway, Gibson and Drake are a great tag team, and win with an assisted Codebreaker I’m going to call the Knacker Machine. Its actual name is “Ticket To Ride,” which is at least a recognizable Beatles hit. I’m surprised they didn’t name it The Visit To The Merseyside Maritime Museum.
Best: Rhea Ripley Is A Mood
Same.
Best/Worst: Poor Toni Storm
The finals of the NXT UK Women’s Championship tournament between Rhea Ripley and Toni Storm is a good match, which is apparently a miracle considering that Storm gets (according to reports, at least) legitimately injured early on. Not sure if she hurts herself when she misses a hip attack and hits the barricade, when Ripley follows up by pushing her back-first into the ring apron, or when Ripley follows THAT up with a kick to the back, but by the time the kick comes Storm’s visibly upset trying to get her to stop. Then she’s audibly crying, which is … not a good sign.
Via Cageside:
Storm’s injury is believed to have occurred during the finals of the two day tournament to crown the first NXT UK Women’s Champion on Sun., Aug. 26. After her match with Rhea Ripley (won by Ripley), the referee threw up the ‘X’. Storm walked to the back on her own after being checked on, and there’s been no official announcement confirming or backstage source commenting on the nature of her injury.
At the time, the finals of the Mae Young Classic at Evolution were in jeopardy, but thankfully that went down without a problem. There’s been some speculation that the injury was worked (or made to sound worse than it was) to get her off of Progress and wXw shows, but it certainly looked legit. Storm guts through the remainder of the match and they do a good job of working the injury into the story, real or not, and Ripley gets the win with the Riptide.
NXT Dad and NXT Grandpa show up to congratulate her, and there you have it: Rhea Ripley is your first-ever NXT UK Women’s Champion. She’s technically held the belt for like 100 days already, but her reign is officially recognized as starting here. And hey, it’s good to see the woman who is basically the big heel of the tournament defeat her competition by kicking their asses instead of screwing around with the rules. It’s important to put over your first championship tournament as a true battle of talented stars, instead of, say, having a wormy guy win your first-ever women’s Money in the Bank ladder match. Good to see NXT UK operating closer to NXT than to WWE.
So, What Did We Learn From These Shows?
- Rhea Ripley is a bad-ass
- Toni Storm has a heart the size of Dave Mastiff
- a guy named “Tyson T-Bone” is as good as he sounds
- going forward, Radzi must operate like a Muppet and hold the microphone up through a hidden underground compartment
- you can’t count on Pete Campbell for anything
- if you turn on your tag team partner, crack an invisible egg on his face to scare him into submission
- British Strong Style > Australian Strong Sort-Of Style > the Wolfpac
- if you touch Pete Dunne’s mouthguard he will end you, no matter who you are
Join us next week as we continue to catch up with … [checks notes] FOUR MORE EPISODES? Argh, slow down!
