It’s Fatal Four-Way time. We’ve had the hype building for weeks as to who will win the match to be the next number one contender for WALTER’s belt. That match was set against a hot Glasgow crowd and part of a card that featured two short matches and Zack Gibson making fun of another WWE crowd. It was a shorter show with a killer main event. Plus we are officially building towards another NXT UK TakeOver now. So, let’s stop stalling and get into it.

The Hunt defeated Tyson T Bone and Saxon Huxley via Double Diving Headbutt

NXT UK opened up with a very quick tag match between The Hunt, Primate and Wild Boar, against the big bad jobbers Tyson T Bone and Saxon Huxley. It started with The Hunt looking strong, transitioned to a beatdown of Wild Boar and ended with The Hunt dominating. There is not a whole lot to report from this match. The Hunt ended the match with their Pop-Up German Suplex and finished it with Double Diving Headbutts. The more important part of the match came after the match when The Hunt were attacked after the match by Mark Coffey and Wolfgang. The Gallus boys shouted about causing violence and wanted the whole NXT UK crowd to see what they were doing. There wasn’t a whole lot of rhyme or reason to it but it was cool to watch and the crowd ate it up. Hopefully, this means that The Hunt actually get a feud now and we’ll hopefully see Primate and Wild Boar get a small push, even if it is just to lose to Gallus.

Kay Lee Ray defeated Kasey Owens via Dirty Bomb

The next match saw current Women’s division threat, Kay Lee Ray in action. The current ICW Women’s Champ was tasked with fighting Kasey Owens whom she made relatively easy work of. Ray started the match by working the arm and avoided most of Owen’s offence. She would pepper her opponent with strikes both in and out of the ring and only hit harder when Owens had the audacity to slap her. Owens was able to get in some offence after avoiding a Hammerlock throw into the turnbuckle and hitting a flurry of strikes. However, an overhand chop, Crescent Kick and a Dirty Bomb later saw Kay Lee Ray pick up the three count. Again, this was a pretty quick and done match but it’s always fun to see Ray in action. NXT UK have given her a long set of wins so she should be pretty close to a title shot and may end up being the one to dethrone Storm.

Grizzled Young Veterans Took to the Ring

Zack Gibson is still number one with a microphone. He started by calling Vic Joseph a whelk and went on a tirade against having to defend their NXT UK Tag Team Titles at Download Festival. He took umbrage with having to defend the belts in a muddy field in front of a bunch of sweaty goths. It was a small funny promo that was dripping with hatred. Zack Gibson is the perfect example of someone who can promote events whilst making it fun. We have no idea who they defend the belts against yet but the Download Crowd should be in for a fun match. Even if Gibson doesn’t want to walk his custom-made wrestling boots through the mud.

Travis Banks defeats Jordan Devlin, Dave Mastiff and Joe Coffey via Kiwi Crusher to Devlin to become the new #1 contender for the WWE United Kingdom Championship

Now time for the main event, the Fatal Four-Way to determine who will be the next man to challenge for WALTER’s NXT UK Title. This match was total and utter chaos. It went from Banks going after Devlin and Coffey fighting Mastiff to all four men going hell for leather against each other. It was a glorious fustercluck of flying bodies, strikes and reversals that saw everyone getting thrown around. Devlin seemed to be the smartest man in the ring, then would be targeted by everyone, Mastiff and Coffey played tennis with Devlin and traded the banner for the strongest man in the match back and forth whilst Banks seemed to be the ultimate survivor. This was one of those matches were describing every move and every big spot would take hundreds of words. There were Giant Swings, German Suplexes aplenty and more than the average amount of stiff strikes. Everyone looked strong and Banks got to look like the opportunist after taking advantage of a damaged Devlin once Mastiff and Coffey had taken each other out of the match. He will now go on to face WALTER at some unannounced time and hopefully put on one hell of a match. He missed the first TakeOver due to injury and now has the chance at a title shot whilst also screwing over Devlin, a man who cost him so much.

So that is that, another NXT UK episode down. The Glasgow tapings have continued to provide some stellar matches but it’s difficult to stay invested when only one big match happens per week. The excessive number of squash matches is becoming a chore as it builds up stars but fails to provide anything meaty. That Four-Way match was amazing but the build to the main event was tepid and matches would benefit from being longer. Don’t get me wrong, when an NXT UK show is fun it’s definitely fun but a lot of the episodes these days tend to be squash or short match heavy, feeling unsatisfying. On the plus side, Dragunov vs Conners in next week. Let the hype commence.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL1uF12dMI4]

(All images courtesy of wwe.com)