It didn’t take long for the ill will between WWE United Kingdom Champion Pete Dunne and NXT Tag Team Champion Roderick Strong to come to the surface in their bitter grudge match. With the events of TakeOver: New Orleans still fresh in their minds, The BruiserWeight and The Messiah of the Backbreaker unleashed a galaxy of big strikes and nasty slams on one another.
The turning point in the hard-hitting showdown came when Strong prepared to hit one of his trademark chops (the same move that turned Daniel Bryan’s chest beet-red in the 50-Man Greatest Royal Rumble Match). Though Strong had wisely avoided giving up his hand to the digit-mangling Englishman throughout the match, his luck ran out here. Dunne prevented the chop, caught Strong’s hand and bent his fingers in all the wrong directions. The WWE U.K. Champion then barraged Strong with a German suplex and the Bitter End, but before the referee could count to three, Undisputed ERA’s Adam Cole & Kyle O’Reilly ran in and broke up the pin.
As Strong, Cole & O’Reilly continued beating down the outnumbered Dunne, a cavalry arrived in the form of Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch. After their run-in with Undisputed ERA last week, the gritty Brit-Am alliance was all too happy to even the odds and help send the nefarious faction scrambling from the ring. Dunne was denied the satisfaction of pinning his betrayer, but he can at least find solace in the fact he is no longer fighting this battle alone.