[2019-01-12-WWE-NXT UK Takeover: Blackpool] James Drake & Zack Gibson vs Trent Seven & Tyler Bate

[paul sosnowski]

James Drake & Zack Gibson face Moustache Mountain (Tyler Bate & Trent Seven) in a tournament final to determine the inaugural NXT UK Tag Team Titles.  Talk about it here

[Tetsujin]

I have problems with this match. Entertaining enough, but they wanted to be the MOTY instead of just having a great opener and that clearly damaged It. Too long, overkill, anticlimatic "hey-look-how-awesome-this-match-is" spots. Just not my cup of tea. **3/4.

[Makai Club #1]

Good match. Some nice tag wrestling, simple heel/face dynamics. Seven was pretty awesome selling all the way through with Gibson and Drake cutting him off and beating him down - doing a real great job with it too. Bate showed some impressive strength. The crowd went NUTS for this match which was awesome to see. They hated Gibson who milked it in at the start - great stuff from him. Bate’s comebacks at the end were pretty sick, made him look like a star even if the aeroplane spot was a bit silly. I liked this. ***1/2

[ShittyLittleBoots]

I echo Tetsujin's thoughts about this being a overkill workrate match. Didn't like it at all. All 4 guys were super generic on the offense. Also having watched quite a few Nigel McGuinness matches in the past few days, I must say that the London Dungeon by both Drake & Gibson looked so goddamn weak. Awful stuff. *

[MikeCampbell]

This reminded me a bit of 'Mountain's matches with the Undisputed Era, except that it wasn't nearly as good. This felt too long, and there were at least two other sequences that would have made perfectly good finishes. 

[nivvad]

Even though I'll say it's a good match, this was highly disappointing to me. The workrate was obviously good, but everything just felt super sanitized. It was your generic WWE structure where one team works a guy for a really long time only for the hot tag to be made which was to Tyler who did his usual stuff. It's hard for me to give a shit about Gibson and Drake when the latter contributes absolutely nothing to the match. Trent's FIP segment was the same stuff you've seen him do a thousand times before, ***3/4.

[Tenese Sarwieh]

Great southern tag match with Bate/Seven defining their roles perfectly. I didn't get the appeal if Trent Seven but over the last two years he has won me over. He does fip so well and sets up Tyler Bate for those super hot tags. Gibson was awesome in his heel work riling up the crowd on letting every action breathe. Brilliant stuff all around.