NXT UK Announces Heritage Cup

As announced on tonight’s edition of NXT UK, an eight-man single-elimination tournament will soon be coming to the brand known as the Heritage Cup. The only difference between this and a standard tournament will be that all matches in the cup will be fought under British rounds rules.

https://twitter.com/wrestlefirst/status/1304136074466385922

The rules for the tournament are fairly simple;

• Each match is fought as two out of three falls for six rounds at three minutes apiece
• A fall can be gained via pinfall, submission, or count out (a disqualification or knockout ends the match completely, regardless of what fall is being contested)
• A 20 second break will be held between each round to allow competitors to rest
• Whoever scores two falls or has the point advantage at the end of the match will advance to the next stage of the tournament

This isn’t the first time NXT UK have used a British rounds system, of course, with Kassius Ohno scoring a victory in a one-off version of the match last September, while also using the stipulation on an NXT house show the same month against Danny Burch. While ‘The Wrestling Genius’ has since been released by the company, there is still a whole host of viable contenders for NXT UK to enter into the tournament.

At the time of writing, only seven of the eight competitors have been revealed for the eight-man field, those being Flash Morgan Webster, Noam Dar, Alexander Wolfe, A-Kid, Dave Mastiff, Joseph Conners, and Trent Seven. Additionally, it hasn’t been mentioned if the winner will receive anything upon winning the tournament, such as a championship opportunity against whoever wins the title match between Ilja Dragunov and current champion, WALTER. Stay tuned for those details as and when they emerge.

Also announced on this week’s NXT UK episode, Kay Lee Ray will defend her Women’s Championship against Piper Niven in two weeks’ time.