Jinny and Aoife Valkyrie clash once again on NXT UK this week, but this time an added shark cage at ringside.
Quick Results
Aoife Valkyrie pinned Jinny in a no-disqualification match at 14:28 (***)
Heritage Cup Contender’s Tournament – First Round: Kenny Williams beat Oliver Carter by 2 falls to 1 at 1:43 of Round 4 (**¾)
Rampage Brown defeated Joe Coffey via knock-out at 19:47 (**½)
We open with a recap of Takeover from last Sunday, because we’d all be whining if they didn’t. Cue titles, with Ilja and the belt at the end, as we’re back at the BT Sport studios with Andy Shepherd and Nigel McGuinness on the call…
No Disqualification: Aoife Valkyrie vs. Jinny
We’ve the added stipulation of Joseph Conners being locked in a shark cage at ringside for this one…
Jinny attacks Valkyrie in the aisle during her entrance, but their attempt to chuck her in the cage fails as Valkyrie throws Conners in – and locks him in. Jinny’s chucked into the barriers and ring steps before the bell… and gets clotheslined and hiptossed when things started out. A springboard crossbody from Valkyrie gets an early two-count, but Valkyrie gets low bridged to the outside. Conveniently, there’s a chair under the ring that Jinny puts to use, but Valkyrie’s able to shrug it off and take Jinny back into the barriers, then into the no-crowd. Stomps take us towards Noam Dar’s set, while kicks to the quad keep Jinny down. Valkyrie wrecks a laptop over Jinny, before emptying out a bin full of coffee cups on her as we get a tour of the BT Sport studio…
Valkyrie misses a double sledge off the rails as they head back into the ringside area, but it’s still all Valkyrie here, as the camera kept cutting to Conners frothing at the mouth in the cage. Conners protests as Valkyrie brings out a table, but Jinny throws Valkyrie into the rails before she could do anything with it. After taking a beating for six minutes, Jinny slaps Valkyrie, then threw her in the ring. The same one she just said Valkyrie didn’t belong alongside her in. Mounted punches follow, before Valkyrie’s thrown onto the apron, right by the table… Jinny tries to knock her through it, but they end up on the floor, jockeying over a suplex that Valkyrie manages to land.
From there, Valkyrie leans Jinny against the table, but of course Jinny gets up… only to get kicked down as Valkyrie misses the Peripeteia – with her legdrop off the apron going through the table instead. Ow. Jinny rolls Valkyrie back inside for a ripcord Koppo kick, but Valkyrie kicks out at two repeatedly. Jinny’s back outside looking for another chair, as she tries to Pillmanize Valkyrie, but Valkyrie’s back out and drops Jinny with a kick, before going up top… only to get caught by Jinny again. A superplex is blocked, as Valkyrie hits a sunset bomb… but her leg gives out on the landing. They replay that as Valkyrie’s checked on by a doctor… and it looks like a Seth Rollins-style injury, but they keep going.
Hobbling, Valkyrie’s able to hit a spin kick to knock a chair into Jinny for a two-count, before a wild swing caught Jinny badly. More chairshots follow, before Valkyrie picked up Jinny for a Made in Japan onto the chair, and that’s enough for the win. This threatened to fall apart badly following the knee injury, but they kept it together to get to the end – whether they had to edit huge chunks out or not. Not sure what you do with Jinny now she’s away from the title picture… ***
In the locker room, Emilia McKenzie’s asked about her training when Amale interrupted to ask Meiko Satomura for a rematch. McKenzie refused to move, so Amale’s going to “go through Meiko’s pet project”.
They replay the finish of WALTER/Ilja “2”, as Ilja provides some comments presumably from Florida as he finds it hard to describe what he went through on Sunday.
Heritage Cup Contender’s Tournament: Oliver Carter vs. Kenny Williams
After a week off, the Heritage Cup contender’s tournament is back…
Round 1: We start with shoulder blocks, before Williams kicks out Carter’s leg… then grabbed a side headlock. The takedown has Carter by the ropes, but he strikes back as Williams had him by the dreadlocks, taking things to the corner ahead of an armdrag and an armbar. Another grab of the dreadlocks frees Williams, but Carter’s back on his armbars, rolling Williams for a two-count as the pair trade pinning attempts ahead of the clock running out.
Round 2: Williams kicks Carter to start, taking him down to the mat as he clubbed away on the Ghanaian. Another hair pull has Carter in the ropes, with Williams having tied the hair up so he could kick Carter. A dropkick takes him down for a two-count, before a whip bounced Carter into the corner. Right hands from Carter look to stun Williams ahead of a leg lariat, but he kicks out at two, before heaping over Carter in the ropes leads to a rebound sunset flip to get the first fall at 2:12 of the round.
Round 3: Williams starts the match on the outside as apparently he was looking to while out the next four rounds to get the win. The chase ends with Carter hitting a sweet flip kick to take Williams outside for a plancha, before bringing things back inside. Williams’ rebound lariat’s for nought as Carter knocked him down with a clothesline for the equaliser at 1:35 of the round. OF COURSE.
Round 4: Carter starts out with some right hands as he looked for the win, leading to a Quebrada for a near-fall. Williams avoids a scissor kick and rolls up Carter for a near-fall… then hit a spear to the thigh. Carter tries to nick it with an inside cradle, then kicked Williams to the outside. Kenny Williams undoes the turnbuckle, grabbing his metal water bottle in the process… with the ref distracted, he clocks Carter with the bottle then nicks the pin. Williams faces Noam Dar in the second round. **¾
Nina Samuels approaches the Assistant to the Regional Manager… she wants competition, but so does someone else, and they make the match. Nina Samuels is the next step up on the ladder for Blair Davenport… and Nina’s not happy.
Isla Dawn’s got her spooky vignette. She’s back in the woods with the hair of Dani Luna, adding it to the box of trinkets she’s hidden away with Emilia McKenzie’s watch. And we go on…
Teoman’s got a promo for his Heritage Cup tournament match with Nathan Frazer. They’re both looking forward to it, as Frazer’s looking to use this tournament to prove his naysayers wrong. That’ll be next week, along with that Nina/Blair match.
Knockout or Submission Only: Joe Coffey vs. Rampage Brown
Five Star Wrestling’s Tap or Snap Championship Lives!
We get the main event intros, boxing-style corner pads and an all-black NXT ref’s shirt. It even looks like they’ve ditched the fake Thunderdome screens as Rampage and Coffey lock up into the ropes. A dropkick from Rampage has Coffey on the back foot, before Coffey returned with a crossbody out of some criss-cross rope running. A lock-up goes nowhere but into the ropes, as the pair collide with shoulder charges on the apron before Rampage got knocked to the floor. Coffey joins him with a dropkick, then knocks Rampage into the no-crowd for a over-the-barriers tope that nearly went sour. Rampage’s back body drop knocks Coffey back into the ringside area, before his over-the-barriers dive went a little smoother.
Back inside, Rampage kicks Coffey’s left hand, then wrings the arm as he went to the ground looking to get a submission with a wristlock. Coffey gets free, but his attempt at a Boston crab is rolled through, before some punches from above were caught and countered with another armbar attempt. Coffey frees himself and applies that Boston crab, only for Rampage to break in the ropes. Using the ropes, Rampage hangs up Coffey by the arm again, but Coffey gets mad and rips off the boxing-style corner pads, so he could throw Rampage into the exposed corner. A backbreaker’s next, before a German suplex left Rampage down… but Coffey can’t maintain the bridge as both men end up on the mat.
Coffey hauls up Rampage into an Electric Chair drop. Rampage rolls outside as we get muted “this is wrestling” chants, before Rampage pulled Coffey through the ropes to the floor. Staying on the floor, Rampage posts Coffey, then pulled his arm repeatedly into the post, before a back suplex back inside left Coffey rocked. Rampage goes for a Saito suplex, but it’s blocked as a belly-to-belly from Coffey looked to buy him time. The pair trade shots ahead of a scoop slam from Coffey as commentary entered the shoutier phase of the match… Coffey’s able to hit a springboard moonsault out of the corner, that looked to have a nasty landing on Rampage, but somehow Rampage is back with a gutwrench that Coffey escaped.
A back elbow drops Rampage, but he clubs away Coffey in the ropes, leaving the Scotsman on the middle rope for an avalanche backdrop driver, which led to a nasty head drop for Coffey as we then enter the sat-down monologue part of this. Yeah…
Cue one more exchange of strikes, with Coffey trying to come off the ropes as this turned into a boxing match, before both men got knocked down. The Glasgow Send-Off from Coffeys’ next, then Awra Best for the Bells, but Coffey can’t make the cover, as they then go back to the strikes. A Judo takedown and a uranage from Rampage has him ahead, before a big lariat dumps Coffey… there’s no stoppage, so he goes for a Doctor Bomb. Again, there’s no stoppage as the ref does the arm drop test, but Rampage keeps swinging as another Doctor Bomb drops Coffey, with hammer fists from above leading to the stoppage. Commentary wet themselves over this, calling it “the most brutal in NXT UK history,” but in front of a live crowd I’m not too sure the length and the format wouldn’t have had this one eaten alive. The right result, you’d say, but this went too long and had too many of those main roster tropes at the wrong points in the match. **½
Rampage looks for a fist bump from Coffey to close out the show – and gets it as the newly reloaded soundboard plays the NXT chants as we fade to black…
Same stuff, different day. They’re trying to bring the big guns on these shows without neither WALTER nor Ilja around – but much like the remaining empty arena shows that are still on the air, being the outlier at this stage of the pandemic, when just about everyone else is back with fans, makes the product less appealing.