5 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE NXT Battleground (Review)

DOWNS…

3. Heritage Dud

Noam Dar
WWE.com

As someone who never watched NXT UK, this writer was curious how the Heritage Cup rules would play out on television. As a concept, it seemed interesting, but there was always a decent chance that it would fall flat and bore fans to tears.

The Heritage Cup title match between Noam Dar and Dragon Lee didn’t bore fans in attendance at all, but as a concept, it just didn’t feel like it worked. The rounds, with 20-second breaks in between each, slowed the action down just enough, and there wasn’t much strategy incorporated into it.

The fans in attendance were hot for a lot of the action, but they would have been just as hot – or even more excited – for a simple 2/3 falls match rather than a six-round match with a bunch of other extracurriculars with cornermen.

Call this a noble experiment that really needs some tweaks if it’s going to have a future on WWE programming. Otherwise, this is going to have a short shelf life.

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.