BRM Reviews the 8/21/2019 NXT UK

[Big Red Machine]

IMPERIUM (Fabian Aichner & Marcel Barthel) vs. THE HUNT (Wild Boar & Primate)- 6.5/10
Solid tag team match with a very good crowd reaction. Imperium pick up the clean win.

SID SCALA ANNOUNCES TRAVIS BANKS VS. NOAM DAR FOR TAKEOVER: CARDIFF- Should be a good match. They made a point of noting that Banks was robbed of a TakeOver match when Jordan Devlin attacked him the day of TakeOver: Blackpool, and now he is finally getting a TakeOver match.

RADZIE WAITS OUTSIDE IMPERIUM’S LOCKER ROOM FOR AN INTERVIEW- When Aichner and Barthel return from their match they tell him to f*ck off on their respective languages. We then hear them getting attacked by an unknown assailant. Barthel gets shoved out the locker room door and into the cameraperson, who drops the camera so we don’t see who the assailant is, but considering the big deal the announcers made during the previous match about Tyler Bate lurking around, I’m going to go out on a limb and say the assailant is Erick Rowan’s lookalike. The more artistically-inclined viewer will note the repetition of the “dropped camera broadcasting on its side” motif from the initial Imperium vs. British Strong Style brawl.

KAY LEE RAY vs. SHAX- 2.75/10
Short and one-sided, but not enough so to be a squash.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- fine
Kay Lee Ray comes out and says a bunch of things designed to make Toni wonder if she herself is the reason all of her relationships fail. Toni eventually slaps KLR when she says that Toni’s father knew what a pathetic person she would grow up to become and that’s why he abandoned the family. Toni, via her facial expressions, did a great job of making it seem like this was actually getting into her head and that the slap was literally her lashing in an attempt to make the words stop rather than merely an angry response to someone saying mean things to her.

JOE COFFEY VS. DAVE MASTIFF VIDEO PACKAGE- fine

RADZIE INTERVIEWS JORDAN DEVLIN- fine
Devlin is upset about not being on the TakeOver card. Some Scottish guy (Kenny Williams, maybe?) came up to him and challenged him to a match next week.
After those two left, Alexander Wolfe and WALTER showed up, yelling angrily in German. WALTER is furious about the earlier backstage attack and tells Radzie to go find Tyler Bate and make sure Bate will still meet him in the ring. He then tells Radzie to never, ever, get in their faces and try to interview them ever again.

IF ANDREWS WINS, HE AND WEBSTER GET A TAG TITLE SHOT AT TAKEOVER: CARDIFF: Mark Andrews (w/“Flash” Morgan Webster) vs. James Drake (w/Zack Gibson)- 7.75/10
Drake and Andrews had a GREAT back-and-forth match. Eventually Gallus came out and attacked Webster, which distracted Gibson, and arguably distracted Drake as well, although I’m not sure it did and the announcers didn’t really sell it like it did (he glanced in the direction of the commotion briefly, but I don’t think that split second made the difference in Andrews being able to recover enough to turn the move into Stun-Dog Millionaire for the win).

CLOSING SEGMENT- great
TRENT SEVEN comes out of the crowd. If he is the mystery assailant, he took the time to change his shoes and socks before coming out here. WALTER ran down to the ring to confront him, with Wolfe only a few steps behind. Tyler Bate then came out and took Wolfe out with a chair. We then got a brief but GREAT brawl first with the babyfaces double-teaming WALTER and then between WALTER and Bate when Seven went to go beat on Wolfe. I know I just said that the babyfaces double-teamed WALTER but even so it was still exciting, and even though he had the advantage of a chair, the spots they did still made it feel like Bate was accomplishing something major by coming out on top of WALTER here.

A very good episode of NXT UK. Next week is the go-home show.