6 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE NXT UK (17 June)

Downs...

3. A Champion Without A Challenger

As was mentioned in the intro, this week’s NXT UK would have been the go-home show to NXT UK TakeOver: Dublin. Had the 20 June event not been cancelled, you’d have to imagine a four-way NXT UK Championship bout between Joe Coffey, Rampage Brown, Ilja Dragunov, and defending champion WALTER would have main evented.

Coffey, Brown, and Dragunov were instead shown in a sit-down segment backstage, hyping up their three-way bout for next Thursday. Why was this in the script?

If any match didn’t require a single bit of pre-match hype, it’s this. You’ve literally got three tough b*stards about to obliterate each other. Talking heads segments aren’t a necessity here. Rampage didn’t need to mention how he had a hard upbringing coming from Leeds, just like Joe Coffey didn’t need to do the same thing with regards to Glasgow.

That this isn’t an official number one contender’s match makes no sense. WALTER returned last week in a dire segment where he noted how nothing is going to change; no new challenger was set. A four-way is the obvious route, but needless to say, this would serve nicely as a contendership contest. That should have been set up here.