WWE Worlds Collide: NXT vs. NXT UK airs starting at 7 ET/4 PT this Saturday, January 25, live on WWE Network. The Battle For Brand Supremacy™ features an eight-man tag team main event, matches for the NXT Women’s and Cruiserweight Championships, and more. Here’s the full card, as of publication.
WWE Worlds Collide Card:
1. Imperium (Walter, Fabian Aichner, Marcel Barthel and Alexander Wolfe) vs. The Undisputed Era (Adam Cole, Kyle O’Reilly, Bobby Fish and Roderick Strong)
2. NXT Women’s Championship Match: Rhea Ripley (c) vs. Toni Storm
3. Finn Bálor vs. Ilja Dragunov
4. Fatal Four-way for the Cruiserweight Championship: Angel Garza (c) vs. Isaiah “Swerve” Scott vs. Jordan Devlin vs. Travis Banks
5. DIY vs. Mustache Mountain
6. Kickoff Show Match: Mia Yim vs. Kay Lee Ray
As always, we’ve got your complete rundown of the card and analysis below, featuring predictions for all six matches. Worlds Collide is replacing TakeOver as part of the Royal Rumble weekend, so if you’d like to read predictions for the Rumble itself, you can do that here.
Kickoff Show Match: Mia Yim vs. Kay Lee Ray
What You Need To Know: Mia Yim and Kay Lee Ray were on opposite teams in the women’s War Games match, and now they’re going one-on-one in a non-title match on the Worlds Collide pre-show. Yim’s had more of an issue with Dakota Kai than Ray, but you can’t run NXT Domestic vs. NXT Domestic on the NXT vs. NXT UK Kickoff.
What Will Happen: This is the second easiest match of the night to predict, behind Finn Bálor vs. Ilja Dragunov. Expect Yim to put up a good fight like always, but for Kay Lee Ray to win. If not totally clean, maybe with a handful of cargo pants.
Staff Picks
Emily Pratt – Unless Mia Yim’s going on a UK excursion, I don’t think it makes sense for the NXT UK Women’s Champion to lose a non-title kickoff show match. Since I think Yim’s staying in the States, I’ll say Kay Lee Ray wins.
Elle Collins – Even if this is a non-title match, which I believe it’s meant to be, there’s no way the NXT UK Champion loses to a midcarder from the domestic brand. KLR is one of my very favorites, and even though she’s not on the main card, I hope this gets some new American eyes on her. Mia’s great too, but this time she’s going down.
Scott Heisel – Kay Lee Ray will Kay Lee Roll all over Mia Yim and her, uh, less than pristine ringwork.
DIY vs. Mustache Mountain
What You Need To Know: Triple H, Johnny Saint, and William Regal were all sitting around the circle when HHH took a long bong rip and said, “oh my God, you know what we should do? Mustache Mountain vs. DIY.” And then everybody went, “OH SHIT THAT’S BRILLIANT,” because yeah, there’s no story or build, but it’s Mustache Mountain vs. DIY. If this is anything less than four stars it’ll be genuinely baffling.
What Will Happen: On paper it looks like NXT will dominate the UK on this card, so I think Mustache Mountain might pull off a win. That said, it’s hard to see the Super Team Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa have become and think Trent Seven’s in the match for any reason other than to take the pin. That’s no shade on Seven, but he’s in there with Gargano, Ciampa, and Tyler Bate. That’s totally unfair company. Picking DIY with my head, but Mustache Mountain (who is an actual, current, and ongoing tag team) with my heart. Gargano and Ciampa should never truly be friends again, in my opinion.
Staff Picks
Emily Pratt – Unless it’s real DIY reunion hours, I feel like Mustache Mountain should win this since they’re a legit current tag team.
Elle Collins – I’d hate for NXT UK to lose every match on the main card, and so I want to think Mustache Mountain could win this. Neither team of bearded best friends has been teaming up as much recently, but I think Trent Seven and Tyler Bate’s drama-free affection for each other may give them an advantage over the more fractious Gargano and Ciampa. In any case, I’m committing to Mustache Mountain as my pick to win.
Scott Heisel – This match will be awesome and ultimately completely meaningless. Wrestling for wrestling’s sake, right? Mustache Mountain will fall, with Trent Seven taking the pin and Gargano and Ciampa moving onto their respective singles matches at TakeOver: Portland, likely never speaking of this random one-time reunion again. Their brand is supreme!
Fatal Four-way for the Cruiserweight Championship: Angel Garza (c) vs. Isaiah “Swerve” Scott vs. Jordan Devlin vs. Travis Banks
What You Need To Know: Angel Garza, best known for whipping off his breakaway pants in front of people’s wives to play sexual mind games, recently won the Cruiserweight Championship. His first defense is a big one, taking on three big contenders: Swerve Scott, who impresses every time he steps into the ring; Jordan Devlin, who just took Tyler Bate to the limit in one of the best matches of the year; and Travis Banks, who just got a big singles win over The (or at least “a”) Brian Kendrick.
What Will Happen: I think it’d be cool to see Jordan Devlin take this match. The guy’s on a roll as both a character and an in-ring performer, and following up that match with Bate with a surprise championship win could be fun. Especially since it would (1) establish synergy between the shows and note the fact that secondary championships will occasionally bounce around the brands, depending on what they need, and (2) give Worlds Collide a moment of real consequence, with a championship switching brands. The sensible part of my predictive brain says this is just a televised house show and nothing’s really going to “happen,” per se, but this match is the one that could subvert expectations. Also, it should be bonkers.
Staff Picks
Emily Pratt – A match full of 205 Live/Cruiserweight division guys and NXT UK guys feels like truly the battle for the lowest-tier WWE brand. Garza won his title on real NXT and is one of the rare WWE hot guys who is canonically recognized as hot, so I think that should give him the edge to retain.
Elle Collins – I would actually love to see Jordan Devlin as Cruiserweight Champion at some point, but Angel hasn’t had that belt for long and I suspect he gets to keep it here.
Scott Heisel – From my Best and Worst Of NXT from a few weeks back: “Swerve’s JML Driver looks insane, so expect him to hit it on one of the NXT UK competitors then get tossed out of the ring by Garza for a sneaky pin to retain.” Who wants to bet against me?
Finn Bálor vs. Ilja Dragunov
What You Need To Know: Ilja Dragunov is an irradiated (?) Russian man who is pretty small but wrestles like he’s Braun Strowman. Finn Bálor sees a lot of himself in Dragunov, but currently seems like he secretly kinda hates himself and what he’s become, so he’s gonna dropkick a man’s whole career.
What Will Happen: It’ll be competitive, sure, but Finn Bálor’s still going to eat this guy’s lunch. From a purely character-based point of view, Dragunov has been portrayed as an impactful but relatively directionless loner who hasn’t quite figured out where he belongs in NXT UK. Meanwhile, Bálor’s on some Prince Devitt shit, heading into a match against Johnny Gargano, and fully prepared to show why he returned to NXT with Big Dick Main Roster Energy. Finn for days.
Staff Picks
Emily Pratt – The only thing related to NXT UK I care about is Ilja Dragunov not losing his feral “lizard who was turned into a man” quality. I feel that a feral lizard who has been turned into a man should not lose to a guy who spells “Prince” as “PRINXE” and we’re all supposed to just act like that’s cool and normal! Anyway, I think Balor can afford to take an L to put over an up-an-coming guy, so I’ll predict Ilja wins. But whatever the result, this is my most anticipated match of the show.
Elle Collins – This is a fun matchup of two vaguely supernatural weirdos with no body shame whatsoever. While I think Ilja has lots of potential in the long term, Finn is much more the guy right now, and I expect he’ll win.
Scott Heisel – So many of these matches seem like foregone conclusions, but none more obvious than this, in my opinion. Finn will win(n). There’s an outside chance Johnny Gargano shows up to cost him the match, but that is some main roster-ass booking, so hopefully we keep it clean and let the Prince dominate.
NXT Women’s Championship Match: Rhea Ripley (c) vs. Toni Storm
What You Need To Know: Rhea Ripley just gave wrestling audiences the feel-good moment of 2019 when she was able to unseat Shayna Baszler as NXT Women’s Champion, ending her 416-day run. Toni Storm, although she likes the crowd and means well, comes across as kind of an entitled, assumptive person who’d see someone she used to wrestle win a championship somewhere else and be like, “oh, I could beat her, let me go win that championship.”
What Will Happen: Rip and Tide. No way Storm wins here. Ripley gets a win back over the woman who took away her UK Women’s Championship after only (kayfabe) 44 days, and Storm goes back to NXT UK to find someone else she can be affable with until she wants something from them.
Staff Picks
Emily Pratt – It would be a real mood and momentum-killer for Rhea to lose her title right after ending Shayna’s reign and Toni Storm doesn’t even go here so I’m predicting she loses a good match.
Elle Collins – Rhea Ripley was in NXT UK like five minutes ago and fought Toni Storm at least 30 or 40 times, so this isn’t exactly the freshest matchup for a “Worlds Collide” match, but I know they can do great work together and hardly anybody watches NXT UK, so I get it. Rhea’s definitely retaining, though.
Scott Heisel – I can’t envision a single scenario in which Rhea Ripley drops the title to Toni Storm a month before TakeOver: Portland. Like, maybe if her arm accidentally fell off in the middle of the match. Maybe.
Imperium vs. Undisputed Era
What You Need To Know: NXT’s leading heel faction, The Undisputed Era, showed up at the end of TakeOver: Blackpool II to attack NXT UK‘s leading heel faction, Imperium. Imperium returned the favor by showing up on NXT, helping get UE eliminated from the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, and then attacking them en masse after Roderick Strong lost the North American Championship. They’re going to have an eight-man tag team match about it, and people are going to get chopped so hard they do backflips.
What Will Happen:
Anybody else down for a WALTER vs. Rod chop battle? Undisputed Era seems like the obvious choice here, as Imperium’s lower ranked members seem a lot weaker than the Era’s, and you could easily see Alexander Wolfe or Fabian Aichner take a pin to Adam Cole. At the same time, WALTER’s already been disrespected enough, hasn’t he? I’ll say Tommaso Ciampa shows up to distract Cole somehow and leave Cole or someone on Cole’s team respectable to some WWE® Brand Ringkampf Violence. Maybe DIY shows up, which brings out Finn, which causes a big show-ending brawl. The Royal Rumble is this Sunday, folks!
Staff Picks
Emily Pratt – With all this talk about the UE prophecy coming to an end, NXT’s biggest dirtbags losing to NXT UK’s biggest tracksuit enthusiasts makes sense to me.
Elle Collins – As an NXT UK loyalist, I find the idea a bit insulting that WALTER and company could lose to four small-ish Americans with no respect for the sacred mat, but realistically I think UE is winning all the same. WWE has a lot more invested in Cole and his cronies.
Scott Heisel – Imperium: Then. Now. Forever. Seeing as how NXT domestic is likely to win most of these matches, it makes sense to give NXT UK the main event.
There you have it; that’s what we think will happen at Worlds Collide, which should be a hell of a lot of fun to watch whether it ultimately ends up “mattering” or not. Let’s hope it matters!
Make sure you’re here on Saturday night for our open discussion thread and live results. Until then, drop down into our comments section to let us know what you think will happen. Matching tracksuits or t-shirts with underpants? Who ya got? And hey, while you’re hanging out with us to watch and talk about wrestling, be here on Sunday for the Royal Rumble, too.
