NXT UK recap, Oct. 24: Rise of the Silver Fox

Your recap of all the recappable action from the Oct. 24, 2019 edition of NXT UK, featuring a main event rematch between Trent Seven and Noam Dar.

In this brave new wrestling world, all we fans want is a compelling product that delivers great matches, features memorable characters, is driven by brilliant storytelling, pushes the best talents, doesn’t insult our intelligence and isn’t three hours long on a weekly basis. Our expectations may be just a little high.

While certainly not the platonic ideal of a wrestling show, NXT UK at least has momentum on its side once again.

There’s no TakeOver in sight, yet the brand is setting up and delivering its share of great action. And even if it’s not “great,” at least it feels in service of a purpose. Mostly.

So, who won, who lost, and who flailed around for multiple minutes before getting in a pinning predicament that strains believability more than Marko Stunt? Let’s find out by diving into the Oct. 24 edition of NXT UK: Rise of the Silver Fox.

To Tyler and Pete, with love

As previously established, Noam Dar loves a good scheme. He enjoys nothing more than getting in his opponents’ heads, leveraging mental edges into physical ones, and lol’ing all the way to a victory. But how do you pull a scheme on a man with nothing left to live for?

His two sons/best friends gone across the sea to Wednesday nights, all Trent Seven has left is himself. Well, himself and an undying passion for wrestling that feeds off the energy of the fans. This time, no elaborate mind heist that Dar drums up can break Seven’s dedication to, if necessary, dying for this.

Dar tries to ensnare Seven in his trap before the bell even rings. While Seven does his ceremonial slow roll into the ring, Dar dropkicks him — why hasn’t every opponent of his and Tyler Bate’s done this — before ultimately tying his arm to the post with the stolen and defaced British Strong Style commemorative towel. Then Dar dropkicks the arm. Again, the match hasn’t even begun yet.

Once it finally does, Seven immediately shows how much he needs this, using his already bad arm to wallop Dar halfway to Saturn with a lariat. That’s how the match goes really. Dar does everything he can to mangle Seven, but Seven is going to win this match even if it kills him.

It doesn’t kill him. Withstanding it all, Seven finds power in the fans, in his friends, and in himself. As Dar tries to taunt him with the defaced BSS towel around his neck, Seven does that thing Bate does where he throws one hand up in the air and then punches you in the face with the other — ask Cameron Grimes — snaps Dar’s fingers a la Pete Dunne, and finishes things off with a tribute to himself, a Burning Hammer.

This silver fox may have been down, but that’s not going to stop him from rising back up. As he hobbles around the ring on no good knees, Seven looks so pumped to have gotten the win, to have shown that the even though British Strong Style may be gone from NXT UK, the spirit of it lives on.