WWE Matches That Were PAINFUL To Watch
9. Walter Vs Ilja Dragunov (NXT UK, October 29th 2020)
The goalposts have been moved when it comes to imagining how Gunther would get on in WWE, and while he has benefitted from some excellent timing with certain power changes within the organisation, the rest of his success has come from being as undeniably great as he ever was.
Gunther on SmackDown and Raw got over huge because Gunther on NXT 2.0 was bigger and tougher than anybody else on that roster. Gunther on NXT 2.0 survived the wacky shift from the black-and-gold era (and a name change!) because he subverted the style of the brand and forced others to bend to his will. Walter in a CWC environment managed better than most because he belonged in the sludgy independent version of that anyway, and there are few sights in WWE history as sludgy as the BT Sports studio for a pandemic-era NXT taping. And what he did there was have one of the most violent-looking matches in company history.
Making the most of the silence surrounding them, the two found every single sweet spot on the human body and hit each one as hard as they possibly could. Rare were the times that flesh-on-flesh noises could be so impactful, and they made each slap count double. An endurance battle that was as vile and attritional as their wXw classics, the NXT UK Title (and indeed the brand it represented) had never meant more, and never would again.