When I started my journey of taking online surveys to make money for future blets back in July, as I’ve stated numerous times, the end goal really was to be ready for whenever if and when and mostly if, the WWE Shop would release a replica of the NXT UK Tag Team Championship blet.
Well that still hasn’t happened, and since the belt debuted in 2018, they’ve released countless “tribute” blets, which I put in quotations because almost all of them are entirely existing plates, screwed onto new and gaudy straps, individualized to whichever wrestler they’ve decided to “tribute,” and then charge anywhere from $500-800 for them.
Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, Eddie Guerrero, Ric Flair, John Cena, Edge, Triple H and even Chyna have had tribute belts made in their honor. The Rock and Macho Man Randy Savage have had custom belts designed as theirs. As noted in the past, Xavier Woods’ YouTube channel’s belt has even been made available.
Hulk Hogan has tribute belts both to his red and yellow persona, as well as his nWo Hollywood Hogan character.
The Undertaker has had two tribute belts made, this year alone.
I know it’s a big deal that 2020 marks 30 years in the WWE for the Undertaker, but you know who’s probably the most sick of all this Undertaker tribute-ing? The Undertaker. Mean Mark’s made little secret of his generally low-key secluded life when not actively being the business, so I have to imagine a guy like him is put off by all this attention, but does it because of all the paychecks he’s going to continue to get for the rest of his life, by unwavering loyalty to Vince McMahon, but even still, that’s a whole lot of fuckin’ Undertaker to absorb throughout a year.
Anyway, because it’s painfully evident that the WWE Shop is in no rush to ever, if at all, release the NXT UK Tag Team Championship replica, I’ve long past the theoretical full MSRP of a brand-new release blet, and just been continuing to earn more money on the surveys that I do, because why the fuck not? It’s an easy way to make a little bit of side scratch, and hopefully eventually one day, the blet I really want will actually be made available.
But in the meantime, because of the time of year it is, I noticed that the WWE Shop decided to drop some Black Friday deals of their own, including on blets, and despite the fact that they didn’t have the one blet that I really really wanted, I still felt some excitement and almost a need to capitalize on the fact that they were deeply discounting so many of their inventory.
This is obviously the sale price fallacy, where I simply wanted to buy something solely on the fact that it was on sale. And despite the lack of NXT UK Tag, I still had in the back of my mind some choices that I’d be willing to pull the trigger on, if they were on deep discount, and seeing as how they all were, I winced and realized that I was about to make an impulse purchase on one of them.
After all, I was nearing $800 in survey money, and if there were ever a time to finally dip into the blet money, this would be it. Three blets that I wouldn’t mind adding to my collection were, the WWE Championship (the black one), the former Cody Rhodes white-strap Intercontinental Championship (despite the fact that I have a classic black strap one), and the NXT UK Championship; not the tag belt, but the individual championship.
But because I didn’t want to buy something I was spite buying but I really kind of did want it which is the sheer point of sale price fallacy, I went to my bros online to beg them to convince me to not pull the trigger, regardless of the fact that buying any one of these blets wouldn’t capitalize on my ability to able to get an NXT UK Tag if one were to inexplicably drop the next day. And naturally because they all see through my bullshit, they failed colossally to convince me to hold back, and before I knew it, I was checking out and dropping $300 of my hard-earned survey blet money on a blet that I didn’t even really want did want.
Ultimately, I went with the NXT UK Championship because it’s the closest thing to the UK Tag that I really want, and honestly, it’s probably the only title in the entire WWE family with substantial value currently, seeing as how over the last four years literally only two guys have held it. Not to mention that the Walter vs. Ilja Dragunov match on NXT UK was one of the best matches under the WWE umbrella in ages, and that’s really all it takes for me to suddenly want a blet, like when Gargano/Andrade I suddenly made me want the NXT Championship.
So here we are, the NXT UK Championship, added to my collection. This makes blet #18 to my collection, and there are literally a pile of blets on the ground under my couch, because my current blet wall is full and I need to reconfigure the walls in my room outright in order to appropriately get all of them up on display. Which is going to suck again in the future if and when and if the WWE ever decides to release an NXT UK Tag, because my want for one still hasn’t changed, and the blet money wallet will still continue to grow, nickels and dimes at a time until it ever happens.
