On this week's episode of NXT UK, we finally get a face turn teased last year, and Ilja Dragunov is back... with some sort of mental disorder?
Kay Lee Ray is finally face
At this point, she has to be, right? You introduce Jinny with her own boytoy in Joseph Conners, and Conners is clearly trying to even the odds for her, and there's no way Kay Lee Ray isn't the face here. It's the culmination of that seed planted last year in that match versus Piper Niven.
So Jinny still loses the match despite all that Joseph Conners interference, proving that KLR is just an unstoppable monster. I think they should spend the next few weeks actually fleshing out why Joseph Conners decided to ally with Jinny, because that's what's been missing from this entire angle (if they covered it, I probably missed it, which goes to show that they didn't do a good enough job of explaining it).
The other thing worth talking about from this match is the presence of the other women in the division watching via the ThunderDome setup (when I assume they could have done it in a monitor backstage). There was also some Fiend-like glitching on the screen from who I thought was Aoife Valkyrie, but is apparently someone else? Either way, there seems to be a major reckoning on the horizon for KLR, but I can't piece together how it's going down.
Ilja Dragunov can't control himself
After asking Jack Starz for a match last week, Ilja Dragunov is back in action for the first time since October... with an interesting twist. After Starz strikes him a little too hard, Dragunov seems to lose control, going back into Unbesiegbar mode until he finally wins the match.
He seems to regain his senses (and a little remorse for what he'd done to the poor balding Brit) introducing an interesting new twist to his character. Looks like they're finally adding a new dimension to the Energizer bunny of a Russian, and I'm looking forward to this in the coming weeks.
NXT UK 1/21/21 Final Grade: A-
*****
Romeo Moran (@roiswar) is the Editor-in-Chief of Smark Henry and one of the three hosts of the Wrestling-Wrestling Podcast. He gets by in this hard knock life through working in advertising. Smark Henry was his and Stan Sy's original vision of a watering hole for local wrestling fans. He roots for the undersized guys who hit hard, and he likes taking your wrestling questions over on his Curiouscat account.
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