This week on NXT UK, we get a new UK Heritage Cup Champion.
Welcome to the Bate era
Most new watchers of NXT UK may be wondering why the direction of the brand is so slow. How slow? Consider: only the NXT UK Heritage Cup Championship changes hands nowadays, with the United Kingdom and NXT UK Women's Championship staying put after so long (the women's title is bound to change hands soon, though).
This week's title switch between Tyler Bate and A-Kid is pretty fast in NXT UK terms, and it's one that they knew needed to happen. With WALTER taking months at a time away from the brand, something needs to keep changing constantly—and after six months and less than a handful of defenses, it was as good a time as any to have A-Kid drop the title in a highly competitive environment.
As far as the match goes, it wasn't the best Heritage Cup Rules match I've ever seen, but you can trust these two guys to tell a good story. I'd have preferred a more exciting finish than a sudden pin in the final round, considering everything we've seen from this particular match type, but I knew that losing via a rules technicality was to keep A-Kid looking relatively strong. Commentary was also on point, relaying pretty much everything the wrestlers are doing in the ring exactly as intended to the viewer.
Some may argue that A-Kid's reign feels pretty unspectacular, but in a brand that needs a lot more championship presence, I'll take the Tyler Bate win. This is, after all, the first guy to win the United Kingdom Championship, and him not having a title on the brand always felt weird to me. It feels like he was going to win the cup if he was part of the original tournament anyway—Tyler Bate screams "British wrestling" the most, and A-Kid winning was done to give a great young wrestler a nice opportunity.
As always, go and watch this show. The supporting matches are pretty good, too, making for a solid episode.
NXT UK 5/20/21 Grade: A
Bits and pieces
- You know I love a good hoss fight, so Rampage Brown vs. Wolfgang did it for me. Wish it had a few more minutes, but we're going to get something much better in Rampage Brown vs. Joe Coffey... eventually—and if any midcard matchup deserved to main-event a cooldown episode of NXT UK, it's that.
- The Supernova Sessions with Ilja Dragunov played off a little weird, but eventually got to the point. It's weird that they segued really quick to Noam Dar vs. Dragunov while Nathan Frazer gets sidetracked with Sha Samuels, but Dar vs. Dragunov should be a barn-burner.
- Still not really interested in anything Teoman is doing, but it's versus Ashton Smith, a guy I like watching, so I guess my interest is a little piqued.
*****
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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