British wrestling isn’t dead – but WWE is doing their best to kill it

Rumors of Britwres’ demise have been greatly exaggerated, but WWE NXT UK’s growing presence is nonetheless hampering the growth of the UK wrestling scene

When WWE first announced their brand new NXT UK brand back in 2018, a flurry of thinkpieces emerged predicting, in typically gloomy British fashion, the imminent demise of British wrestling. And although rumours of Britwres’ demise have been greatly exaggerated, a year removed from NXT UK’s inception, the scene is looking decidedly worse for wear.

Far from the cataclysmic extinction event some commentators predicted, the creep has instead been slow and insidious. The subsumation of Progess and ICW was followed by the demise of Defiant and Pro Wrestling Chaos.

It would be disingenuous to pinpoint NXT UK as the sole inciting factor – a challenging economic climate is almost certainly a contributory factor, leading to financial struggle – but given NXT UK’s propensity for swallowing up large swathes of top Britwres talent, it’s equally disingenuous to pretend WWE’s newest brand bears no responsibility whatsoever for the somewhat precarious state of the UK scene.

And NXT UK as an institution is not ingratiating itself with the existing Britwres scene, reportedly imposing a series of increasingly arcane restrictions. Earlier this week, Southside Wrestling Entertainment tweeted that WWE had pulled talent from their farewell show:

Southside, who have recently announced a merger with fellow Britwres promotion Revolution Pro Wrestling, are quite rightly aggrieved by the arbitrariness of WWE’s decision. By all accounts, the promotion requested and were granted permission by WWE to include El Ligero, Kay Lee Ray and others on the card.

For WWE to spontaneously pull a significant chunk of talent – on Southside’s farewell show, no less – seems the very height of pettiness. Rumors that the decision springs from newly-affiliated Rev Pro’s recent (and very public) mistreatment of a referee frankly don’t hold much water; this is a solely Southside show, and it feels like a convenient excuse. More pertinently, WWE have form when it comes to placing unreasonably harsh restrictions on contracted talent.

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In November 2018, WWE introduced new contracts, effectively barring talent from performing for any promotion not affiliated with NXT UK. As Uproxx reported, these restrictive contracts would affect increasing numbers of NXT UK talent as more and more wrestlers signed new contracts.

And we have seen this in action already on the UK scene: Toni Storm, Kay Lee Ray and Viper (aka Piper Niven) all left Pro Wrestling: EVE earlier this year, a promotion they have each called home for the better part of a decade. It’s impossible to blame any of them: NXT UK contracts are, by the virtue of WWE’s immense profitability, a far more secure prospect than anything the UK indie scene can offer, especially in terms of women’s wrestling.

While concrete details are sparse, it appears that WWE are pushing their draconian contract restrictions even further. Voices of Wrestling recently reported that NXT UK contracted wrestlers are no longer allowed to perform on streaming services for unaffiliated promotions.

This is not so much an attempt to protect business as it is an unnecessary jab at indie promotions, most of whom have neither the financial protection nor the drawing power of a WWE-backed juggernaut. It’s difficult to imagine what kind of harm El Ligero appearing at a Southside show could realistically do to a company of NXT UK’s scale.

The Britwres doom-mongers remain just that, but it’s impossible to deny at this point that WWE appears to be gunning for the monopolisation of the UK wrestling scene. The effective blacklisting of promotions like Rev Pro, who wisely opted for affiliation with NJPW over WWE’s offer, is broadly demonstrative of a corporation who not only refuse to share their metaphorical toys, but would rather nobody else had any toys at all.

As Deadspin reports, even the British indie promotions under WWE’s wing are there under precarious circumstances:

"The U.K.-based indie promotions that have signed official working agreements with WWE all have contracts that allow WWE to decide to buy said promotions at an already agreed-upon price and shut them down, whenever WWE so desires."

What this effectively means is that WWE possesses the means to strangle the British wrestling scene should the fancy take them. Shutting down Progress and ICW would be an enormous blow to the scene; cutting off NXT UK talent from the remainder of the scene would arguably not be a killer blow, but it would leave Britwres wounded and limping.

It’s not that there is not plenty of non-NXT signed talent out there: it’s that NXT UK sweeps up the most prominent and promising wrestlers so quickly, and in such abundance, that promotions struggle to fill the gap.

Whether or not you’re a fan of the NXT UK product, or WWE by extension, it’s nonetheless heavily speculated that NXT UK’s inception was as a direct challenge to the revived World of Sport Wrestling. And it’s easy to accept such a scenario. It makes abundant sense that WWE’s initial aim would be to compete with – and hopefully crush – the biggest and best in British Wrestling. A TV deal in a prominent Saturday evening spot effectively painted an enormous target on WoSW. Currently touring live, WoSW are yet to announce their second televised run.

AEW are something of a wildcard presence here. While they may have royally screwed up their UK TV contract – charging UK fans while US fans get weekly shows for free was never going to be a popular decision – Cody recently tweeted in support of Southside, and it was announced that Shawn Spears and MJF would be appearing on the benighted farewell show.

What form this support is liable to take in the long term is yet to be seen, but AEW reaching out to sidelined Britwres promotions could well be a game-changer in the near future.

Some promotions fare better than others. Dodgy referee dealings aside, Rev Pro’s close affiliation with NJPW has proven their saving grace; the Rev Pro British Heavyweight Championship has featured prominently on NJPW shows, thereby solidifying their comfortable niche.

Riptide have long built their brand on the kind of talent NXT would not touch with a bargepole – it’s hard to imagine the likes of Chuck Mambo, Cara Noir, the recently retired Jack Sexsmith and, er, Dave Benson Phillips sitting comfortably on the NXT UK roster.

Similarly, Britain’s top women’s promotion (arguably top promotion irrespective of gender) Pro Wrestling: EVE are not only busily growing and nurturing their own pool of talent via their EVE Academy – up and coming star Rebel Kinney is one such alumnus, another gloriously NXT-unfriendly prospect – but their forging links with the likes of STARDOM shows the kind of business nous and prescience necessary for survival in a post-NXT UK world.

So, Britwres is not dead. And despite WWE’s best efforts, it’s still premature to ring the death knell.

Nonetheless, there is a historical precedent for the current climate of pessimism; WWE’s attempts at basically monopolizing a scene have never ended well for smaller promotions, most of whom by sheer force of gravitational pull are either absorbed or destroyed by the inexorable march of progress. And the fact remains that NXT UK in many respects is simply not as good at what it does as some of its smaller competitors, who, due to the myopia-inducing WWE banner, will inevitably fly beneath the NXT radar.

NXT UK’s women’s scene is patchy and underdeveloped despite an overwhelmingly talented roster. The Britwres atmosphere cultivated by the likes of Progress, EVE and ICW feels watered down, hampered by a kind of generic blandness; it’s as though NXT UK fails to understand what kickstarted and prolonged the Britwres revival in the first instance.

The constant accumulation of talent fosters a bloated catalogue of talent doing absolutely nothing – a lesson that ought to have been learned from WWE’s US brands. Under these conditions, it seems very unfair that the likes of EVE and Riptide should have to compete with the WWE juggernaut for an audience they have more than earned.

But this is purely academic. What we do know is that WWE’s contract-tinkering and imposition of unreasonable restrictions points strongly towards a potential interest in monopolising British wrestling. Will they succeed? It seems unlikely; British wrestling, and European wrestling on a broader scale, is producing new and exciting talent all the time.

A more likely scenario is the slow hobbling of the scene, miring non-affiliated promotions in a tangle of weird restrictions and sanctions, which is liable to cool off the enthusiasm these promotions have worked so hard to foster in British fans, and the warehousing of talent which may be for the sole intention of keeping them from wrestling anywhere else.

The Britwres slowdown then cannot solely be blamed on NXT UK. Nor is the scene in any imminent danger of dying. But times they are a-changing, and to pretend that the presence of WWE on the UK scene is not at least partially responsible is to bury one’s head in the sand.