5 Real Reasons Why CAN'T MISS Wrestling Prospects Bombed

Wrestling is way more of collaborative effort than many of its success stories would have us all believe. The business promoted by those that make it to the top as a dog-eat-dog/shark-like/pick your favourite animal analogy is in fact one that requires a numbers advantage just like everything else.

The best wrestler in the world could be hated by a booker. The best booker could have the worst wrestlers. The bookers and wrestlers could have their vision screwed up by a bad agent. Extend the parameters to television and it gets even harder. Every single thing could play out exactly as planned but the commentators could mess up the sell. The cameras could miss the moment. On and on and on it goes to the point where the more you think about it, the more you put just about every good thing you've ever seen on a wrestling show down to luck more than all of those individual's judgment.

The upper echelon of pro wrestling is virtually impenetrable, making it all the more impressive when stars break out, talent break through, and performers genuinely connect. It's why, contrary to increasingly over-simplified conversation in a social media age, there's typically more than one good reason why an act failed too. There are just too many traps one can likely stumble into on the road to the top - it's little wonder so many hot prospects fall in to one... 

Tyler Bate was just 19 years old when, in front of a packed Empress Ballroom in Blackpool, England, World Wrestling Entertainment decided to strap him up as their first WWE UK Champion in January 2017.

That sentence alone feels like something generated by the sort of ineffective AI that appears at the top of the average Google search almost a decade later, but somehow all of it is true. A total prodigy having worked less than three years by the time he was carrying a belt the market leader now pretended to are about, Bate had worked roughly 300 matches between his 2014 in-ring debut and WWE bow. For context, current-era breakout star Je'Von Evans has only just clocked up the same amount despite wrestling twice as long and getting an extended NXT run to tune him up for weekly shifts on Raw and SmackDown. 

Bate had miles on the clock, and was constantly gaining value thanks to experience and connections - his on and off-screen relationship with fellow scene standout Pete Dunne and BritWres boom veteran Trent Seven further bolstered the sense that he was an unstoppable force. British Strong Style in name and concept was over. Moustache Mountain for all of its of-the-time meme popularity was over. Peaky Blinders theft, full stop, was over. Then the bell rang, and Bate monstered bigger men with deceptive strength, gifted the crowd sing-songs and let-ups with his wry throwback comedy, and clawed through the ropes for support with all the guile of Ricky Morton at his lowest ebb. He quickly became the performer most associated with the perfect wrestler hypothetical; what can't he do?

The answer, somehow, was occupy wrestling's brightest spotlight despite impressively holding down full-time employment with the market leader ever since.

Why?

The end, as is all-too-often the case, starts at the beginning. Bate really was an ideal inaugural UK Champion, but idealism was rapidly at the core of just about everything to do with that entire project. Observers old enough to have lived through similar versions of the same thing could see what was going on with WWE's sudden interest in a scene that had served itself just fine before the big boys took over. They wanted only the best bits of it for a diluted version that could chew up just enough of the UK market, all while stirring up division between those that (somewhat justifiably) wanted permanent deals with the market leader and those that (even more justifiably) knew that the pots of gold weren't going to be in high supply nor even full of that much gold.

Bate had a belt and a slice of history, but was now front-and-centre of a capitalist culture war that played out precisely as most assumed. Within a year, the belt was only valuable as a prize in actual NXT, the eventually-launched NXT UK was a middle-of-the-road compromise of a promotion that served nobody, and as the first winner, Bate was - in more ways than one - the first loser. He dropped it to Dunne in booking that reflected a fairly rapid rejection of even minor changes he was making to the aesthetics of the first character that got over on the big stage. Youth became young manhood, fans craved Bate making time stand still more than reflecting its cruel movement, and what little prestige remained of WWE UK was transferred to Dunne and new signing WALTER.

Bate, Dunne and select others chugged along until really they were the only ones left from the barren wasteland WWE left behind, but TV reps had the opposite effect to road ones- 5 years after his debut, the 24-year-old already felt out of date. Triple H getting the creative reins initially seemed to be a ray of light for the pair, but perception was too close to reality and the damage was done. New Catch Republic may as well have been subtitled with "that wrestling style you've been bored of for a while", and it spoke volumes when becoming masked goons for El Grande Americano in 2025 was unreservedly a step in the right direction.

Age has been the blessing and curse of Bate's run thus far. He's "done it all", but his birth certificate still places him a decade away from what now classifies as wrestler's prime. There's still time to see the top of the mountain, but has a full adult life in base camp convinced him that the comfortable life is the best one?