WWE: Ranking The Top 10 NXT matches of 2018

Photo: WWE.com

Honorable Mention: Undisputed Era (Kyle O’Reilly and Roderick Strong) (c) vs. Moustache Mountain (Trent Seven and Tyler Bate)- NXT Tag Team Championship Match (NXT U.K. Championship: Day 2)

WWE has some of the most talented tag teams in the industry under their umbrella, which makes their consistent mismanagement on the main roster — aside from The New Day and The Usos — all the more frustrating.

Conversely, the NXT creative team protects their top duos, which in turn allows them to create new stars in the division with well built, competitive matches. Occasionally, the writers will book a surprise title change to accelerate the process and pop the crowd.

That brings us to this match, which took place on the second day of WWE’s U.K. Championship special last June. Aside from a six-man tag the previous day that included U.K. Champion Pete Dunne and then-North American Champion Adam Cole, these two teams never interacted prior to their title encounter. With the in-ring chemistry these four possessed with one another, it looked like they had hundreds of matches prior to this one.

UE members Kyle O’Reilly and Roderick strong spent the middle part of the match getting the heat on Trent Seven, but things truly heated up once Tyler Bate got the hot tag.

From there, the two tandems exchanged counters, strikes, and nearfalls in front of an appreciative Royal Albert Hall audience (Bate and O’Reilly had a particularly strong back-and-forth in the late stages of the match). That same crowd roared in approval once Seven scored the pinfall on O’Reilly following a Knee Drop/Burning Hammer combo to win the titles.

These teams matched this effort in two later installments — including a match at NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn IV — but this one established Moustache Mountain as the anchors of the NXT: U.K. tag team division.