NXT in the UK (10/9/20): False Alarm, It's Not A Face Turn
Two weeks ago, we saw a really good NXT UK Women's Championship match between Piper Niven and champ Kay Lee Ray in which I thought the latter turned face. The hallmarks were there: Ray went down with a (kayfabe) injury, the match was supposed to be called off, she decided to gut through the pain and win. That's something babyfaces do, and everyone knows that.
Well, it turns out that as of this week's episode of NXT UK, I was wrong. Kay Lee Ray is still very much a heel, and if that wasn't clear enough, the whole babyface side of the NXT UK women's division tried to get her after she gloated about it.
Assuming KLR will always be a heel (at least for the foreseeable future), that makes the title match from two weeks ago extremely baffling. It was good, but the dissonance with the story they were telling is plain as day.
In the end, there's not much I can do about it, especially if they're sticking to KLR being a heel. I just want to ask them not to pull that injury shit again.
A-Kid beats Flash Morgan Webster
On this week's Heritage Cup Tournament slate, we get another good British Rounds match. The Spaniard A-Kid beats a swole Flash Morgan Webster, pretty much cementing the latter's spot in the tag team division. (It also doesn't help that he gets beaten up backstage by what seems to be another tag team.)
This tournament match is more modern, with high-flying and hard hits being thrown around instead of the grapple-heavy style we got from Alexander Wolfe and Noam Dar. A-Kid fights from underneath to come back and win in the fifth round.
I'm worried they're going to keep sticking to the 2-1 trope for this whole tournament. It's good, no doubt, especially with these guys, but if all the matches are going to be back-and-forth nailbiters, eventually nothing's going to be very exciting. I'm looking forward to someone getting absolutely squashed, even if it makes the loser look rough. Give Dave Mastiff a 2-0 in the second or third round, or something.
NXT UK 10/9/20 Final Grade: B+
Photo from WWE
*****
Romeo Moran (@roiswar) is the Editor-in-Chief of Smark Henry and one of the four 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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