11 Things WWE Got Right With UK Championship Tournament

7. Establishing Alignment Dynamics

Pete Dunne Sam Gradwell
WWE.com

Going into the tournament, there was a fear that traditional face/heel dynamics could be thrown out of the window in favour of the live crowd showing respect and appreciation for the 16 men involved. WWE managed to nip this in the bud early on in the first round, but positioning two key competitors as clear heels and putting buckets of sympathy on a number of potential breakout babyfaces.

Pete Dunne's attack on Sam Gradwell at the end of the first night added a spice to their match that could well have been lacking, and the assumption that Dunne would win easily was removed in favour of the crowd wanting to see Gradwell get his revenge on The Bruiserweight.

Dunne came out of the tournament as the clear number one heel, but Jordan Devlin also saw his stock rise on account of his dastardly behaviour. His controversial win over Danny Burch in the first round was followed by a post-match attack, and if this tournament leads to a show on the WWE Network many will be looking for Burch to get his revenge on the Irishman.

It wasn't perfect, but WWE managed to create crowd favourites and hated heels in a tournament where those watching feasibly wanted all 16 men to succeed. This should be applauded.

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Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.