2020 Ongoing MOTY List: Gallus vs. Burch/Lorcan

54. Wolfgang/Mark Coffey vs. Danny Burch/Oney Lorcan NXT UK 1/18 (Aired 2/13/20) (Ep. #79)

ER: It's been fun going through all of NXT UK, and I'm not at the point where I'm starting to see the very first matches I saw of them. NXT UK bringing in Lorcan, Ohno, Kendrick, etc. was what originally got me to watch, and this match was my first time seeing Coffey and Wolfgang, who have turned into two of my five favorite NXT UK wrestlers. I watched this a couple years ago, and I loved it even more two years later. 78 episodes have already shown Wolfgang to be easily one of the best in the fed, but this match might be his greatest showcase yet. It's also a real fine showcase for Danny Burch, meaning his two greatest WWE performances just might have been this tag match and an NXT UK tag match vs. The Hunt shown two weeks prior but taped just the day before this tag. I'm not sure what Danny Burch was on that weekend in January, but I'm here for it. 

This was a hot 10 minutes that peaked with a heat section on Lorcan that built to a fiery Burch hot tag, but the whole thing had a nice back and forth energy. The Gallus takeover was so well done, executed in a way I haven't seen: Lorcan was going off battering Coffey and Wolfgang, running attacks on them in opposite corners, until Coffey grabs Lorcan with a rear waistlock after getting nailed, pulls Lorcan backwards into the corner, allowing Wolfgang to come flying across the ring with a high crossbody into Lorcan's upper chest. Wolfgang is great at using his body as a weapon, as he flies out of the ring hitting that crossbody and comes roaring back in with a divebomb elbowdrop to a sitting up Lorcan, and later dives into a seated Lorcan with a senton. 

Wolfgang is great at creating space, a great guy to work with Lorcan. I loved how it looked when Lorcan leapt for a tag and Wolfgang caught him over his shoulder to drag him back over to the Gallus corner. The visual was a nice preview of Wolfgang scooping Burch over his shoulder for the match ending powerslam later on. When Burch does tag in it's awesome, knocking Wolfgang off the apron (with a nasty bump to the floor by Wolfie), muscling Coffey over with a German and holding onto the waistlock, then pulling Coffey into a headbutt. There were some real fine pinfall saves by both teams, those fun pinfall dogpiles that get one guy shoved painfully on top of a pin, and I'm kind of a sucker for when the camera shows the pinfall and leaves an obstructed view of the man about to break up that pin. Wolfgang takes Lorcan out of the match with a wild spear through the ropes and too the floor and gets back in to scoop Burch into that powerslam. A week before this match Wolfgang/Coffey worked one match in the NXT Dusty Tag Classic, and then this match against the future NXT tag champs. This was a killer glimpse at what it would have been like to see Gallus working with other WWE and NXT teams instead of being kept in the UK bubble, and it's a shame we never saw more of it. 

2020 MOTY MASTER LIST