"WWE UK Championship Tournament" Discussion Thread

I didn't catch it, I'm afraid. You'd think I should have, being English and all, lol. But nah, I haven't been following it.

Got through watching the tournament today, and I was really impressed by everything especially the tone of it. It just felt British. I've been watching the UK scene now for a while and it has started a boom period for the country, from companies like ICW, Rev Pro, progress, Fight Club Pro and a few others. I'm glad as well that Pete Dunne is getting acknowledged, knowing he is from the same area of Birmingham, England as me, it's cool seeing that.

My question is where does it go from here? After the tournament what happens?

Would it make sense to put the UK championship on NXT? rather than Smackdown or Raw. The Cruiserweight division just needs more talent. And maybe on a different day rather than being after Raw.

On raw the US title is just floundering at this point, maybe it should have went to Sami Zayn rather than Reigns. Have Zayn be the underdog.

If anything there are far too many titles to begin with and everyone just gets lost in the shuffle. It would have been better to have all champions compete on both shows.

So night two was better than night one by a country mile. They managed to make stars out of Tyler Bate, Pete Dunne and Mark Andrews in only two days. Incredible. And that Dunne/Andrews match...you HAVE to check it out if you haven't already. It's absolute insanity.

As far as I'm aware they're planning on doing a show for the Network specifically shot and based in the UK, so I think we'll have a month or so of them signing all of these guys up to contracts. People like Dunne and particularly Wolfgang and Trent Seven will have loads of dates to fill. I reckon they'll have told them 'you're all getting signed. Do your dates and then we'll get sorted', much like they did with all the cruiserweights. I don't think this'll get Vince'd nearly as much as 205 Live, mostly due to the fact it'll be over here and not within the reach of Vince. I don't think he really has an interest in it either, not as much as Triple H, who just seems to be a huge fan of all things old-school.

All in all, I think I enjoyed this more than WrestleKingdom, if I'm honest. I may be biased because of my love of British wrestling but this show just meant SO much and it was done with the right amount of WWE-ness, but not too much whereby it was overbearing and overproduced. It's my show of the year so far and it's going to take a LOT to top this for me.

I've heard from a couple of people that ITV have commissioned it, they're just deciding on a date and the logistics of when they start doing tapings, but having seen WOS and assuming WWE UK is of the same quality that this weekend was, I don't think there's any threat from ITV here. Theirs seemed much more like "remember wrestlers?? Look at all these gurning, grunting men!" whereas WWE UK felt like a homage to the British Indy scene and it was better researched as to what British fans enjoy.

The world of Sport wasn't that bad to be honest, I think maybe the booking and a few cut scenes to where there doing backstage interviews needs changing. And maybe getting some backstage interviews from a wrestling point, not from an ITV point.