WWE NXT UK Review - June 30, 2022

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Blair Davenport def. Angel Hayze

Davenport suffered an injury earlier this year that kept her sidelined for a few months, but I'm glad she wasn't out longer. Her being back is a big boost to the NXT UK women's division and I maintain she should be the one to dethrone Meiko Satomura as NXT UK Women's Champion. While this didn't need to be as long as it was, this was essentially an extended showcase for her. She didn't show much ring rust, either, which was encouraging. 

Fallon Henley def. Emilia McKenzie

Henley is one of the more polished newcomers to NXT's women's division. Granted, she's still inexperienced and will get better in time, but she has more experienced than most of the athletes NXT 2.0 has hired in the last year who have none. Her time on AEW Dark before joining WWE helped quite a bit. At any rate, this was a well-worked match for the most part and it told the story of McKenzie getting more intense but still falling short of victory. I hope these losses are leading somewhere for McKenzie and aren't happening simply because they're rather put over the NXT 2.0 people.

Wolfgang def. Sha Samuels

Mark Coffey will challenge Noam Dar for the NXT UK Heritage Cup Championship (again) in two weeks, so their tag team partners faced off against each other here. Wolfgang is a technically sound competitor, but as I've always said, I find it almost impossible to care about the guy. He and Samuels had a perfectly decent match, but it really didn't matter who won, so there were no stakes or drama and the crowd reacted accordingly (by not really reacting at all until the end). They picked up the pace down the stretch, but this could have benefited from being slightly shorter.

Trent Seven Explained His Actions

Seven came out looking like an absolute douche, which was a wonderful touch. He cut your typical promo and offered something of an explanation for why he betrayed Tyler Bate, but it wasn't as deep as I thought it would be. It was honestly fairly generic, but it's refreshing to see him in this role for the first time in NXT UK, if nothing else. Maybe they'll delve more into their history as times goes on. This was a solid segment despite being on the shorter side. It did accomplish its goal of putting more heat on Seven, though.

Overall Show

As I've said before, the Moustache Mountain breakup is genuinely the only thing in NXT UK that truly intrigues me at the moment. Ilja Dragunov must be out injured because he hasn't been mentioned in what feels like forever. If we get Meiko Satomura against either Davenport or Sarray soon, then that's great, but nothing else about the brand is remotely engaging. The shows are just sort of there, especially without any TakeOver specials to build to.

SEE MORE: NXT UK Reviews