It’s been a few days since NXT UK TakeOver: Cardiff, and I still can’t really get over the ending to the main event between Walter and Tyler Bate. It’s not the fact that Walter defeated Tyler Bate to retain the WWE UK Championship, it’s how he won the match that still has me feeling perplexed and amused at the same time: Walter won the match with a clothesline, after everything else in his arsenal failed to keep Bate down for the count.
I mean, it was still a pretty good clothesline that Bate sold like the champion he really should be, but the fact of the matter is that Walter hadn’t really ever bust out a clothesline in general in the WWE until about now. I guess the question is if he’s going to be using that as his signature move instead of the power bomb and/or big splash, to help reinforce the move, or if it really was an isolated case of an ordinary move succeeding at rendering a guy unconscious enough to end the match.
It reminded me of this classic wrestling match I saw once, where it was Rick Rude before he ever became Ravishing, versus some guy I don’t remember, and with Gordon Solie on commentary. The conclusion of the match came when the opponent was momentarily distracted by something, leaving him open to an ordinary axe-handle smash from behind, before Rude hit him with an ordinary snap suplex, and pinned him 1-2-3. All while Solie bemoaned the impact of a regular suplex and verbally sold that the match was over once he hit it.
Walter winning with a regular clothesline made me feel like I was thrown back into the early 80s with a finish that came from what is ordinarily a common move, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this was a deliberate throw back or if it was the seed to something that will continue to grow.
But the thing is, with Tyler Bate now done with for the moment, NXT UK really has run out of legitimate contenders for the WWE UK Championship. Since Walter defeated Pete Dunne for the title, he’s since defeated Dunne in a rematch, Jordan Devlin, Travis Banks, Kassius Ohno, Trent Seven and now Tyler Bate. NXT UK doesn’t have a particularly deep roster, so it leads me to be very curious on what they can actually do with Walter and the championship next, because as it stands now, they’re franking running out of contenders.
Dave Mastiff comes to mind, so they can embark on a classic Big Man vs. Big Man match, but he just lost to Joe Coffey in a last man standing match. And Coffey himself would be an ideal contender, seeing as how he’s already in a kind of elevated main event position, but it would lead to a heel vs. heel scenario, seeing as how both Imperium and Gallus are fairly heel factions. Zack Gibson is a guy that I’ve always liked, and seeing as how he and James Drake just dropped the NXT UK Tag Team championship, he’s free to go singles again, but like Joe Coffey, he’s another heel already that would be going after a heel champion.
Basically, NXT UK has put themselves in a position where they’re kind of out of contenders to Walter, unless they want to embark on a heel vs. heel storyline, and go through the challenge of trying to sell sympathy for guys that UK fans love to heckle, boo and jeer. Or, they have someone in the wings waiting to debut, or bring over from one of the American shows, and personally I like the idea of bringing Johnny Gargano to UK to contend for the WWE UK Championship, where he can win it and then lose it in his first defense, and continue his pattern of gaining and then losing every NXT title.
In that very vein, American NXT has put themselves in a similar situation with their Women’s Champion Shayna Baszler, who has at this point defeated just about any and every realistic contender for the NXT Women’s Championship. After defeating Ember Moon for the title, she’s since lost-regained-retained with Kairi Sane, and defended against Bianca Belair, Io Shirai and Mia Yim. There’s a bevvy of women in the division that she hasn’t beaten, but they’re all greener than baby shit, and this includes her own lackeys in Marina Shafir and Jessamin Duke, so the contender pool is extremely shallow.
They’ve already shown their hand already by importing over Rhea Ripley from NXT UK to start a program with her, but this is also an indication that NXT as a whole is running the risk of running out of legitimate contenders for their respective championships, and I’m curious to see what they’re going to do in coming weeks and months to stabilize. Doubly interesting will be how they do this while navigating with the fact that NXT is going to cable television and will producing more programming, more often on top of it.
Either way, when it comes to pro wrestling, change is often times good, and it’s indefinitely always better than growing stale. This could be a good time to be a wrestling fan in the coming year or so.
