8 Ups & 1 Down From WWE's UK Championship Tournament Finals (Night 2)

1. Two Stars Are Born

Fittingly, the WWE UK Championship match was the best contest of the tournament. Tyler Bate vs. Pete Dunne was a perfect culmination to everything that had transpired in the build-up, and frankly, WWE's main roster stars will do well to top this bout over the coming months.

Bate was cleared to compete following Dunne's assault earlier on, but his shoulder was in bad way. Dunne attacked it throughout, and it looked like Bate had an impossible task ahead of him. He was already going up against the most vicious competitor in the tournament, and doing so with a taped-up shoulder seemed to make Dunne's victory a certainty.

Bate fought like a lion. Dunne was his usual aggressive self, but Tyler broke through the pain barrier, even when victory looked way out of reach. The turning point came when Bate miraculously used his injured arm to pull Dunne up from a triangle hold and Powerbomb him into the mat, and after working his way out of a nail-bitingly intense Kimura, Bate pulled it off. Dunne couldn't withstand the Tyler Driver 97, and Bate was crowned Champion.

WWE made two new stars last night. Tyler Bate walks out with the gold, but Pete Dunne felt no less important, and that's partly down to the effort WWE had put into building him up throughout the tournament. Bate & Dunne's work was nothing short of stellar: both work with a fluidity and presence that belies their respective ages (Dunne is 23, Bate is 19), and if there's any justice in the world, they'll both be major WWE stars within the next few years.

A memorable end to a memorable tournament, culminating in the emergence of two bright new superstars. You can't ask for much more than that.