NXT UK TakeOver: Blackpool II 1/12/20

Trent Seven vs. Eddie Dennis

ER: Eddie Dennis has a wild set of reptile gear, full boots and toxic slime green snakeskin like he's some kind of early 90s straight to video punk. It's glorious. I like him and Seven as a match up, and there's some explosive stuff. The match starts with a wicked one armed powerbomb by Seven, planting Dennis after catching him charging in. Dennis takes Seven's offense really well, bouncing right off his head on a DDT, getting dumped to the floor with a snap German. But Seven's punishment gets even better with a fast tope and and a snapdragon suplex on the floor. Their pace is really impressive for the level of big moves they're piling up. It's like a weird crazy WCW Power Plant match if they only studied NOAH tapes, with some forearms and big flipping slightly complicated slams, threats of Burning Hammers and Emerald Flowsions, and Seven hitting a right forearm in the corner as hard as Misawa's best. There are a bunch of big complicated slams, and the absolute craziness peaks when Dennis launches Seven with a Razor's Edge to the floor like he was Mike Awesome. Totally crazy spot to lead to a finish, not like any other finish I've seen on NXT UK. This was a cool ass 8 minute gem, really scrappy and portent, filled with big slams and cool bumps. Hot as hell start to a TakeOver. 

Toni Storm vs. Piper Niven vs. Kay Lee Ray

ER: I really hated how they turned this match into a 3 way. I love Toni, but she felt like a real third wheel in the build to this match, and in the match itself. Niven won the title shot, and then the week before TakeOver Storm just demands Niven let her have the match, and then they put her in the match just because she said she should be in the match! It's awful wrestling storytelling, but she's also a kind of necessary distraction in the match, and allowed them to do some big things that would have felt silly to kick out of. I hate 3 ways as a rule, but they actually kept things at a great pace to start. Niven works really well in a 3 way, as one of her issues is insisting on working fast paced singles without always keeping pace. Here she's able to pace things out and is a great wrecking ball. Niven flattens Ray with a tope and misses a fast cannonball into the barricade, but is back to flattening when she breaks up a pin with a senton. The match gets pretty bad the more melodramatic they got, with dumb stuff like Ray finding a chair under the ring and choking Storm while showing tons of light on the choke, or a big dumb face off between Storm and Niven where the camera framed them. The "making movies" thing can be real painful, but when they went back to being dangerous things got good again. Nigel on commentary calls Kay Lee Ray the "Glaswegian Sabu" at one point, which sounds near blasphemous, but when she hits a somersault plancha to the floor and bounces her legs off the barricade and head off the floor, then breaks up a pin by spiking herself with a somersault senton, this could be an Actual Thing. She looked like she under-rotated on a crazy senton, and then took a powerbomb right after. That's nuts. Storm gets to visually beat Niven before Ray superkicks her off, and I guess now that sets up Storm/Niven which feels reductive, since Storm just shoehorned herself in to begin with. There was some really good stuff here though, a lot of it. This was actually my favorite match of either Niven or Ray in NXT UK, and Storm facilitated some of that. 

Tyler Bate vs. Jordan Devlin

ER: This was a big match with a big payoff and big in-match build, a singles match that actually felt mostly worthy of the long TakeOver match lengths. I think Devlin put his time in well, liked how a lot of the offense built, I mainly just didn't like the ways Bate would just pop up to start his own sequences. Now, Devlin works around most of that really well, finding fun ways to set up Bate's comebacks. Devlin kept using the ropes in fun ways, like cutting off a Bate dive and nailing a nice rope flip moonsault, choking him in the ropes, also getting caught in a torture rack-type fireman's carry when he went to slingshot in with a cutter. Devlin, unsurprisingly, was a real asshole here. He mocked Bate and added some extra sauce to holds and strikes, the best being Devlin dragging Bate down into a Romero surfboard, then bending back on Bate's chin until they were staring eye to eye, sicko stuff.  

Devlin is good at working enough actual offense that reversals of that offense actually make sense, and Bate is good at stepping up with someone like that. I do think it veered into move trading, with Bate constantly need to shrug off whatever had just happened to him to hop up and do something impressive, but luckily Devlin is good at facilitating those hop-ups and Bate can break out something impressive. Bate does an airplane spin that starts slow and ugly and looks like it will be a dud, but keeps going and going and by the end I loved how Bate started with a bit of struggle and then kept building speed. By the time he dropped Devlin I was dizzy on my couch, which sounds stupid, but I'm not sure I've seen someone do an airplane spin this fast. Devlin had smart counters to expected Bate offense, dropping him with a cutter to the apron that almost leads to a count out win (with Devlin amusingly kicking him around 8 to keep Bate out longer), and nailing him with a Spanish Fly to counter a Bate charge. Devlin incorporated a lot of learned behavior into reversals, but Bate mostly just took big moves and then decided to do his own moves. This was the match with the somewhat infamous "punch out" spot, which I actually think is "not actually as shitty as it was made out to be". It's kind of hilarious to me that of all spots, Bate and Devlin doing stand and trade got GIF'd and laughed at, because most feds run shows with worse standing exchanges up and down the card. Do Tyler Bate's arms look short and silly when he swings them? Short? Always. Silly? Sometimes. Give me a punch exchange like this every single time over turn taking elbows and forearms. I liked how some of their punches whiffed completely, because it's frankly silly when every strike in an exchange hits perfectly. Bate needed a big finish to firmly put away Devlin, and Devlin is always great at getting spiked on DDTs and flattened by powerbombs, and the crowd was along for every second of Devlin taking it. Perhaps this went too long

Mark Coffey/Wolfgang vs. Fabian Aichner/Marcel Barthel vs. James Drake/Zack Gibson vs. Flash Morgan Webster/Mark Andrews

ER: So, this match was insane. This was easily one of the greatest highspot ladder matches in history, not just WWE history. This was 25 minutes - normally a match length that I would argue is completely unnecessary for *most* matches - but due to the furious pace that this things was worked, I was shocked at how "long" the match was when it was over. This does not feel like a 25 minute match, because from minute one every single person is flying around the ring at breakneck speed taking bumps that surely shaved months/years off their careers/lives, and I don't think that pace even took a slight break until the 18 minute mark. Not only did they work wall to wall crazy spots and dangerous moments, but they did a great job of making every team seem like they could walk away with the belts. I thought they did so well without the ladders, chaining offense together faster and faster, utilizing all 8 guys to give proper rest and generally avoiding guys ignoring damage to get to the next spot in time, that I was kind of dreading this becoming a climbing contest when it settled down. So, they opted to never settle the match down, using the ladders at first in familiar ways, but then doing twists on familiar ladder match spots before exploding with some things I've never seen before. 

It is completely pointless to detail all of the spots that happened in this match, because it would take me twice as long to type everything than it would take you to find and watch the match. One of the cooler aspects was that every team in the match, worked like a team. They all had tandem offense that was not always their typical tandem offense, remixing some spots and adding in ladders to others, and all the teams actually felt like they had individual strategies. They kept the spot set-up time to a minimum, and when they did one gigantic crash spot that had everyone fall like dominoes, prolonging the punishment instead of everybody just landing like shit from one giant tower powerbomb. It's tough to pick a standout, but I really liked Wolfgang a ton. He's the guy doing crazy spots while also shaking his arm out after punches. Yeah, he'll throw big ass Mark Coffey over the top rope onto everyone and then vault out himself to powerslam Drake on the entrance ramp. But, while men lay dying on the battlefield around him, he's still remembering to sell that his fist hurts, and I love it. So Wolfgang was probably my favorite, but this was a team effort. Every guy got at least one big moment (at LEAST). Mark Andrews hit a perfect shooting star press off the ladder onto Coffey, he and Webster hit a wild tandem somersault senton off a very high ladder, and Grizzled Young Vets seemed to be on the end of all the worst punishments, especially poor James Drake. Drake got smashed with ladders and under ladders and under bodies so many times, poor guy spent most of the match kicking his legs and holding his insides. Imperium looked like real beasts, squeezing their double teams into a ladder landscape even better than the others, Barthel tossing smaller guys off the ladders into waiting arms of Aichner so they could be dropped on their heads. 

It's a match with nothing but great spots, but my favorite had to be Imperium punishing Webster. With Webster laid on a ladder, which had been propped up on the ropes, Barthel holds Webster down so Aichner can hit a springboard moonsault, with Barthel rolling OVER Webster at the last minute TOWARDS Aichner's moonsault, so he wouldn't be standing where Aichner's boots were going to whip. I mentioned the car crash spot, and it really was great. They brought 5 or 6 ladders into the ring, everyone was climbing on them and climbing over each other like World War Z, one guy getting knocked to the mat here, Barthel getting knocked all the way to the floor there, Webster amusingly setting up his ladder so it smashes Gibson in between his own ladder, total madness. Wolfgang goes bet mode down the stretch and spears Aichner so hard into a ladder that the ladder breaks into 4 pieces. I don't think I've ever seen a ladder snap right in half during one of these matches, even when someone falls onto one from a great height. I thought I was pretty burnt out on stunt ladder matches, but this one had me from go and was absolutely relentless. 

WALTER vs. Joe Coffey

ER: I thought this was a pretty great 17 minute main event that made the decision to be a 27 minute main event, and treated that extra 10 minutes as if the previous 17 were just a dream. It was admittedly a bit odd how the match seemed to position Joe Coffey as the babyface and WALTER as kind of a generic heel , but I liked the actual ring work a lot. WALTER worked this mostly as a big chopping monster, and Coffey was the smaller "babyface" who kept trying and throwing WALTER with suplexes. WALTER is great at a big man getting knocked off his feet, and I loved how all of Coffey's suplexes looked like he was having trouble lifting WALTER, because he *should* be having a lot of trouble suplexing WALTER. WALTER wasn't hopping into any suplex and it ruled. If Coffey was going to hit a Saito suplex, it was going to be low to the ground with a heavy landing for both, making the suplexes look more like something you'd see in a Hashimoto/Red Bull Army match. There were a couple odd miscues every time WALTER threw a big boot (one that was supposed to hit did not at all; one that was supposed to miss, hit, and was treated as a miss anyway), but mostly it was WALTER throwing heavy chops while Coffey kept deadlifting WALTER on suplexes. WALTER threw hard elbows, cranked Coffey's neck, and worked a nice STF, Coffey hit a boss shoulderblock off the apron (flying at WALTER like a torpedo), fought for a big German suplex, and hit a surprising moonsault. 

When WALTER accidentally hit the ref with a John Woo dropkick (and the ref sold it like a drama queen rolling down a very soft incline), things mostly fell apart. Coffey gets an immediate visual pin off a powerbomb, Alexander Wolfe and Ilja Dragunov run down and get involved, Dragunov knocks Wolfe into Coffey and they basically do a full match restart for the remaining 10. Nothing felt like it mattered down the home stretch, and WALTER - who had just been "pinned" by a powerbomb moments before - now has several winds and the two trade moves until one of those moves wins the match. Every big move (WALTER powerbomb, Coffey avalanche belly to belly) was used as a way for the guy taking the move to transition back to offense, and there were more miscues like Coffey mostly missing a big clothesline and them just repeating the spot right after. After WALTER chokes out Coffey he had to give the biggest acting performance of his life, acting vaguely threatened by Adam Cole. Cole looked tinier than both referees and the camera angles made it looked like a small child ran into the ring after WALTER's win. 

This was a top to bottom great show, with the only bad 10 minutes being the last 10 minutes of the main event. Every other match was a total over-delivery, making this easily one of the best TakeOver events. WALTER/Coffey was probably the weakest overall match, and that was a match I really loved until it went crazy with the booking. Highly recommend this show. 

Best Matches: 

1. Tag Team Ladder Match

2. Jordan Devlin vs. Tyler Bate

3. Eddie Dennis vs. Trent Seven

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