According to Finn Balor, NXT UK has a “huge negative effect” on the European independent scene.
In December 2016, WWE announced the creation of the United Kingdom Championship, with the intention of it being the biggest prize in the promotion’s new UK brand. While Tyler Bate was crowned the first-ever UK Champion the following January, the new TV brand did not fully launch until 2018 with the premiere of NXT UK.
The brand quickly established a roster with many of the top wrestlers from the British and European independent promotions. While it created a big opportunity for the likes of Pete Dunne, Gunther, and Tyler Bate, the loss of talent had a devastating effect on the indie scene.
“It Starved All The Indies” – Finn Balor On NXT UK
During an appearance on Cody Rhodes’ ‘What Do You Wanna Talk About?’ podcast, Finn Balor spoke about the problems NXT UK caused, saying some promotions are still recovering almost four years after the brand ended.
“When NXT UK started, which was a huge thing at the time for British and European wrestling, I feel like it kind of took all the talent, and it starved all the indies,” Balor said. “And it took a long time for them to rebuild.
“For a lot of them, it hasn’t even happened yet. Because there’s no one to learn from or look up to. The guys like Tyler [Bate] and Pete [Dunne] and everyone else who came to WWE, now the younger kids don’t have anyone to learn from. I feel like there was probably a huge negative effect on the gulf of talent that WWE took out of that, I guess, territory, you know? But slowly it’s starting to rebuild.”
Rhodes compared it to the situation in the US today, where WWE, AEW, and TNA are all competing for new stars for their rosters.
“We’ve seen that domestically in the States with everything that’s popped up with other places to wrestle and things of that nature, it strips away. And then there’s a negative byproduct to it, but then the positive byproduct is these 18, 19 year olds, all of a sudden they’re 22, they’ve grown, and they’ve had to do it very much on their own and they’ve got a set of skills.
“So it always kind of, I hope, refreshes itself and replenishes. Otherwise we have nowhere to look, you know, when we need it the most.”
NXT UK was officially brought to an end in September 2022 when WWE held a ‘Worlds Collide’ event that saw all of the short-lived brand’s titles unified with their NXT counterparts. Finn Balor appeared for the brand several times, most notably defeating his future Judgment Day ally JD McDonagh at TakeOver Blackpool.
H/T to F4WOnline for the above transcription.
