NXT UK Worth Watching: Noam Dar! WALTER Mastiff! Ligero!

WALTER vs. Dave Mastiff NXT UK 1/18 (Aired 3/5/20) (Ep. #82) 

ER: I liked this a lot, but also felt they almost showed too much. It's a short match that never quite feels as high stakes as they want it to feel, and moved too quickly for any of the biggest spots to sink in. I keep waiting for these UK bog beasts to have an undeniable banger, but they keep falling short in different ways. Still, I liked a lot of what they did here. The whole match was basically Mastiff throwing every piece of offense he has at WALTER, splatting him all around the ring. Mastiff has several pieces of really cool offense and while he did them all, he never made it look easy.  I thought a cool element of the match was how little offense WALTER got. Really, beyond a few big (and nicely timed) chops, a running dropkick, and the big powerbomb finish, this was all about WALTER either gaining an advantage by dodging Mastiff or not dodging and getting squished. 

WALTER went for the powerbomb early and wound up with Mastiff plopped on his chest. He got squished with a cannonball, a cool rolling senton, a regular ol' fat guy senton, and generously threw himself into a German suplex (the suplex really felt like it was 95% WALTER leaping backwards like a crazy man). But the match was also about Mastiff being able to survive as long as he did because of big WALTER misses, like a big missed splash and a sidestepped dropkick. WALTER maximized his cut-offs, always eating a few Mastiff strikes before shutting them down with one big chop or a big boot to the chest. And since Mastiff was throwing several shots to every one WALTER shot, he tired himself throwing out everything he had, misses and all. By the time WALTER hit that powerbomb Mastiff was toast. The strength of the match was WALTER's selling: the way he would curl up or drag himself to the ropes after getting squished, and I love how he fell over after hitting the match ending powerbomb. I have no doubt that WALTER could easily powerbomb Mastiff, but it was one of several things he did that made Mastiff feel like a bigger deal.

Noam Dar vs. Ligero NXT UK 3/6 (Aired 3/12/20) (Ep. #83)

ER: An underrated aspect of NXT UK is that while they don't have a large roster, they don't run a ton of repeat matches. Sure, some of these people have worked each other many times outside of WWE, but I think they really maximize the roster they have. You see repeat matches on Smackdown all the time, week after week, but on NXT UK you can find a match that's been done maybe twice. This is the second Dar/Ligero match (first one happened 8 months prior and was longer, but not as good), and you get that familiarity without feeling like you've seen all of this several times before. I thought Dar was really fantastic in this, acting like a real dick to Ligero and having that paid off in a couple fun ways. The match started with Ligero whiffing on an elbow when Dar just moved back away from it, and Ligero committed to the miss to make the spot look good. It looked more like Ligero was not expecting to miss, which is what all missed shots should look like. Later, when he drilled Dar with a Misawa level elbow, it meant more. Dar has insanely fun body movement, slipping and tripping unexpectedly to throw off Ligero's momentum. Dar kicks Ligero in the legs in several spots you don't normally see targeted, kicking him in the knees to get him to fall on the apron, rolling over to take out Ligero's ankle, always kicking him with this great dismissiveness. Dar rarely if ever falls victim to strike exchange silliness, so the stuff that lands always looks much better in his matches. Really the only weak part of the match was a bad looking Ligero handspring, but the move was reversed so I guess...good? Watch this, and just enjoy how they move around each other. 

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