4 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE NXT UK (20 May)

1. Traditional British Wrestling

A-Kid and Tyler Bate’s trilogy was completed with last night’s contest that saw Bate crowned the second holder of the Heritage Cup. The match was a delightful hoot from start to finish because it didn’t follow the path of the other instances of the stipulation; it instead carved a path of its own.

Instead of going balls to the wall the whole way, it was contested like a great novel. The opening two rounds were strictly technical, the middle two picked up a bit with the first pinfall attempts being made and the exquisite counters, and the final two were mind-numbing displays of professional wrestling.

The intricate counters throughout added more to the match than anything else could have. A-Kid avoided Bate’s crawl through the legs display by latching onto him with a sleeper hold, before later facing away during his diving elbow to turn it into a backslide. Because of their history together, it was crucial that this was a major focus of the match.

Having the match go a single fall – which went down in the very last round – is something we rarely see in matches like this. It wasn’t a definitive finish, either; Bate simply caught A-Kid off-guard and rolled him up for the win. The Tyler Driver ’97 had been kicked out of. ‘The Big Strong Boi’ had nothing else left, so this made perfect sense.

A banger from start to finish. The bar has now been set for Bate’s cup defences; this is going to be epic.