BRM Reviews the 5/1/2019 NXT UK (great)

[Big Red Machine]

TRAVIS BANKS vs. MANSOOR- 6/10
A fine opener.

XIA BROOKSIDE AT THE NXT PERFORMANCE CENTER- A terribly embarrassing “I just got my first video editing program so I’m going to play around with it” promo. This made her look like an immature teenager.

ILJA DRAGUNOV IS COMING- Now that’s what I’m f*cking talking about!

NINA SAMUELS PROMO- excellent!
She’s got her own little backstage set that is exactly what you’d expect a literal prima donna’s dressing room to look like, and has started to incorporate theater verbiage into her promos. She’s got a multi-camera shoot set up and is looking into a mirror, reciting a promo she has clearly rehearsed. If she was doing this gimmick in CHIKARA, this is exactly how I would have expected this promo to be, and I mean that as very high praise.

PIPER NEVIN vs. REINA GONZALEZ- 4.75/10
Nigel kept trying to frame this as NXT vs. NXT UK, but I’m not even sure Reina Gonzalez has been portrayed as a real part of the NXT roster so much as someone was just brought in for the Mae Young Classic. The match was a fun hoss fight for the time it got.

KENNY WILLIAMS & AMIR JORDAN PROMO- fine
They want a title shot next week in Glasgow to get some revenge on the Grizzled Young Veterans for disrespecting them, preferably by taking their titles. We would later learn that Johnny Saint made this match official.

GALLUS VIDEO PACKAGE- something about Glasgow

JORDAN DEVLIN vs. WALTER- 7.75/10
GREAT storytelling with Devlin going after the knee to counter WALTER’s massive size advantage, but Devlin losing cleanly at his point was a huge disappointment to me as he felt like the guy to get the title shot at the next UK TakeOver, I wish the match could have gotten more time. The show itself want an astonishingly short (for NXT UK) forty-three minutes, and they still needed time for the…

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
Pete Dunne comes out and demand his contractually-obligated rematch.


A great episode of NXT UK. Things are slowly coming together, but I would really like to see a target date for TakeOver, because once the Dunne vs. WALTER rematch and next week’s tag title match happen, all we’ve really got going on is Niven vs. Ripley and the story of Nina Samuels challenging Toni Storm which has only started this week.