By Haydn Gleed, ProWrestling.net Staffer (@haydngleed)
Join Jason Powell for live coverage of NXT UK Takeover: Blackpool on Saturday afternoon at 1CT/2ET.
NXT UK Hits
“British Strong Style” Pete Dunne, Tyler Bate, and Trent Seven vs. “Gallus” Joe Coffey, Mark Coffey, and Wolfgang: The entrances took place with thirty five minutes of the show remaining so that shows how much of the hour show this took up and yet it was worth it. Although the main event of NXT UK Takeover is the respective leaders of the warring factions, the tension between the six men has been built since the very first episode all the way through twenty four episode mark. It all came to a head on the final show before Takeover so I appreciate the long term storytelling and the payoff. It also managed to build further excitement for the main event at Takeover between Pete Dunne and Joe Coffey by having them not touch except for a brief two minute mid-ring slugfest that was fun to watch. As for the actual match, the first half was somewhat slow, but it built to the hot final fifteen minutes. Fans of ring psychology and selling may not enjoy this stretch of the match, but it was certainly exciting and managed to get the fans who had been in the building for three hours plus to get on their feet and give the wrestlers a standing ovation. An exciting way to end the final segment of the final show going into NXT UK Takeover: Blackpool.
Final hype for NXT UK Takeover: The announcers pushed the network special multiple times and every match had some form of promotion. I’ve already mentioned the main event but they also had a backstage promo from Zack Gibson and James Drake to hype the tag title match, another with Dave Mastiff talking about his no DQ match against Eddie Dennis, and we saw the final build for the Jordan Devlin vs. Travis Banks match. This was a strong and effective way to lead into Takeover, which was the complete opposite of the first show of this week’s doubleheader. If they had found a nice middle ground for the hype over the two shows it would have been better, but I certainly can’t complain about the hype on the second show of the doubleheader.
End of the doubleheaders? More of a personal Hit, but this week should herald the end of two shows every Wednesday. From a pure brand point of view, running two shows each week on an already crowded day of wrestling on WWE Network is very intimidating for new viewers. I hope that the reason for the double shows was the fact that they realized they had too much in the can when they booked Takeover for January. Hopefully they can get into the routine of one show a week and build the brand in a normal, proper way.
NXT UK Misses
Ligero defeating Joseph Conners: I have zero issue with Ligero winning a match, as I have huge amounts of respect for the British luchador, but they spent two weeks building up Conners. He spoke about taking his frustrations out on the shiny new toys of NXT UK and then he just lost in clean fashion in his first match since those promos aired. I just don’t get it.
Dot Net Members have access to the weekly NXT UK audio reviews hosted by Haydn Gleed and Darren Gutteridge. The members are also listening to their NXT UK roster evaluations, and a preview for Saturday’s NXT UK Takeover: Blackpool event. For more information, visit PWMembership.net. If you wish to get in touch with Haydn, do so via twitter (see above) or via email haydn.gleed@gmail.com
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