NXT UK Worth Watching: Dar! Wolfgang! Mark Coffey! Kenny Williams! Howley!

Noam Dar vs. Kenny Williams NXT UK 6/16 (Aired 7/24/19) (Ep. #52)

ER: I wasn't going in expecting this match to play like a great hybrid French Catch/early 2000s Jersey indy style, but I sure left happy that it did. Noam Dar is someone who has done the by far best of his WWE work on NXT UK, which has to be the least or second least watched wrestling program of the brand. Dar's style is quite different than when he was working early into his contract on Raw. It's incredibly weird just how much Noam Dar wrestled on Raw just a few years ago, but he was all over Raw and 205 Live for a good year after the CWC, and then worked constantly on 205 Live during all of the early NXT UK run. Dar has been here 5 years and featured on most of the shows, but his work in NXT UK is where all his gems are. He's this cocky little asshole who doesn't like being worked down to, will fight dirty to win, and always has a couple of surprises. Dar and Williams worked really fast around the ropes and had some really fast work, a different timeline Low Ki/Red. 

It got nice and chippy when, after a few neutralizing exchanges, Williams tousled Dar's hair, and Dar stood up and slapped him across the mouth. Williams uses his body as a weapon in a few cool ways, flying into Dar with a baseball slide to the floor or hitting a flying back elbow from the top. Dar mixes up strikes and lures Williams into a couple of traps, and I thought Dar grabbing Williams in a kneebar while Williams was skinning the cat looked incredibly cool. The finish could have come off too cute or clever but Dar can make these things look punishing. He winds up with Williams' shoe and goes to use it, but instead tosses it to the apron for the ref to deal with, all so he can punt Williams in the balls just because. Noam Dar might be the most under the radar guy on the WWE roster, and it's cool they have guys out there just producing in a weird vacuum. 

Wolfgang/Mark Coffey vs. Lewis Howley/Sam Stoker NXT UK 7/19 (Aired 7/31/19) (Ep. #53)

ER: I think this might be the best squash match so far on this brand, and that's because it was a fantastic Wolfgang showcase. I think Wolfgang is great, one of the few UK guys I get excited to see every time, arguably most underrated guy on a WWE contract right now. Pretty Deadly basically got run over, but there's an art to getting run over while still looking like a good tag team. Picture how nicely Well Dunn always used to get their asses kicked. They looked like a team with great chemistry, they looked like a team who could win matches, but they mostly got their asses handed to them in entertaining ways. Wolfgang manhandles Howley and Lewis in those same kind of entertaining ways, but Pretty Deadly make this work because they aren't total pushovers. They fight back and Howley really stands up to Wolfgang, wrenches him around with a nice headlock, but it is always on their way to getting demolished by Gallus. Competitive squash is beginning to be a lost art so it looks good to my eyes when I see one done right. Gallus looked great, loved Wolfgang's big clotheslines and slams, and the finish looked great, with Wolfgang holding a powerslam so Coffey can kick in Stoker's head before taking that powerslam.

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