BRM Reviews the 11/28/2019 NXT UK

[Big Red Machine]

PIPER NIVEN vs. JINNY (w/Jazzy Gabbert)- 6.5/10
Good opening match stuff between two wrestlers who are right underneath that top level in the division. The story was Jinny relying on Jazzy’s presence on the outside to cause distractions but Jazzy eventually got ejected from ringside, turning things into a fair fight which our intrepid babyface eventually won.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- awesome!
Piper Niven declares her intentions to challenge for the NXT UK Women’s Title. Out comes NXT UK Women’s Champion Kay Lee Ray, who slaps Piper right in the face and starts shouting “HOW DARE YOU-” and gets cut off with a huge right punch, then nails the champ with a backdrop driver, sending her rolling out of the ring.
Then TONI STORM made her big return to NXT UK, going after the woman who took her title. Kay Lee Ray managed to escape, and we were left with Toni and Piper staring at each other. I do think that Toni’s appearance here was hurt a bit by her participation in the Survivor Series Brand Warfare BS (no one from NXT UK came out of that looking good, and including them makes it a little harder to do the NXT vs. NXT UK thing Triple H seems to be enamored with doing for Worlds Collide), but on the whole, this was good. If Toni had helped win the match for her team (why not have her in the finals instead of Io so it’s all babyfaces standing tall)- or at least gotten an elimination- you could have spun it as that being her getting her confidence back to the point where she felt she could return to NXT UK and take on Kay Lee Ray.

EDDIE DENNIS vs. DEREISS GORDON- no rating, decent squash
Dennis is returning from surgery he had back in April. Gordon is apparently a student of Trent Seven’s, and Gordon recently showed up in the crowd during a Trent Seven match and tried to shake Seven’s hand. I don’t know if I missed that detail or it happened long enough ago that I don’t remember it or if it happened a house show and I wasn’t supposed to know about it until now. You’re WWE! There is no excuse to not have clips!
Dennis also did some of Seven’s signature mannerisms and moves, so that’s the feud we’re heading towards. This was a squash, but one that dragged a little bit because it had to go long enough to Dennis to start doing Trent Seven’s stuff.

JOSEPH CONNERS PROMO- He interrupts Radzie’s plug of the main event to tell Radzie that he is going to go to Johnny Saint and suggest himself vs. El Ligero vs. Travis Banks at TakeOver so that everyone gets what they want (he gets to be on TakeOver, they each get a match with him). If Saint says yes then I will admit this was a rather cunning plan by Conners to get what he wants. I think it would have made a little more sense for him to just cut a promo explaining as much after Saint okayed the match instead of having him interrupt Radzie’s plug to essentially monologue to the audience.

NOAM DAR vs. ASHTON SMITH- 5.75/10
Dar wins clean in nine minutes.

IMPERIUM vs. ILJA DRAGUNOV & GALLUS- 7.5/10
This was a GREAT eight-man tag that build wonderfully from the usual babyface in peril stuff to the big confrontation between Joe Coffey and WALTER… and then ended in a frustrating DQ because things got too out of control. BOOK A GOOD FINISH, OR DON’T BOOK THE MATCH! We’ve already seen these groups brawling a million times, we don’t need to end the show with that AGAIN.

This was a very good episode of NXT UK, but definitely brought down a notch by the frustrating finish to the main event. They really need to book these TakeOvers closer together so that we don’t get this artificial dragging out of storylines.