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What's the story?
Ever since the WWE announced it was planning a UK based show, and held its UK tournament crowning Tyler Bate as the first WWE UK Champion, British fans, such as myself, have been waiting with bated breath for news of show's development.
Now, Mike Johnson from PWInsider has shared a huge update and it looks like the WWE is finally bringing the show to fruition.
In case you didn't know...
In December last year, the WWE announced its plan to launch a weekly episodic show based on wrestlers from the United Kingdom which would be kickstarted by a UK Championship tournament containing some of the best names in British wrestling.
In January, the WWE held the UK Title Tournament, where names like Tyler Bate, Pete Dunne, Trent Seven, Mark Andrews and Wolfgang competed. It concluded with Tyler Bate becoming first ever WWE UK Champion.
Yet despite the tournament's success, the weekly shows never came around and any news surrounding them died out.
The heart of the matter
Mike Johnson from PWInsider reports that WWE has been ramping up pitches to several British television broadcasting companies. The pitch is, of course, centred around an all-British wrestling show, produced in the UK, featuring British wrestling talent.
Johnson also alleges that the show has a working title of 'WWE: King of the Ring' repurposing the name of one of its more well-known, but now redundant pay-per-views, last seen in 2015 when English talent Bad News Barrett won the tournament and became "King Barrett".
What's next?
It seems that the WWE is still pitching the show and trying to secure a television deal in the UK before any production can start, so we're still quite some way off seeing a UK based WWE weekly programme.
Interestingly one of the studios that WWE is reportedly negotiating with, is ITV, who own the World of Sport library, which WWE has previously tried to purchase. So there's a slim chance that a deal can be made between the two companies that results in World of Sport being added to the WWE Network and a weekly UK show on ITV.
Author's take
I'm just excited. I truly think the British wrestling scene is amongst the best in the world and is severely underrated. You just need to see the reactions wrestlers like Pete Dunne, Jack Gallagher and Tyler Bate get, and the matches they put on, to know there's a wealth of untapped talent here.
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