6 Ups And 2 Downs From NXT UK TakeOver: Blackpool

Downs...

2. A Crime Of The First Order

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Seeing the recap history of the UK brand served as a reminder of something that was amplified after the UK Tag Team Championship match:

Tyler Bate is criminally underused.

Bate isn’t even 22 yet and is a damn prodigy in the ring. He’s small but deceptively strong, athletic, entertaining, and can utilize a variety of wrestling styles. His UK Championship match against Pete Dunne was the best bout of 2017, and he’s had numerous solid matches throughout the past year-plus, whether in singles or tag competition.

And yet, he and Trent Seven were competing for the UK tag titles, which they lost. That’s not to say that the booking was screwed up, but it’s crazy to think how good Bate is and he’s jerking the curtain in a tag match that he lost.

This is just a snapshot in time, so hopefully we’ll see bigger and better things for Bate in 2019.

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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.