The new Heritage Cup Champion, Tyler Bate, spoke recently with Vicente Beltrán of ViBe & Wrestling. These are the highlights of the interview:
Dissecting his with A-Kid for the Heritage Cup:
The first few rounds felt more like a sporting contest than a regular match, I don’t know if you had that feeling watching it but doing it it felt like that. The first couple of rounds is just a matter of seeing and feeling out and looking for gaps in my opponent; maybe there is a certain way that he reacts… honestly it is like playing chess and I am trying A-Kid to play my game. That’s what the first 2 rounds were about for me. The 3rd round we are approaching the half way mark and the paste picks up and he got pretty striky; he throw the first strike and I had to retaliate and play his game.
We are friends and when we are at the PC we play chess and I got to know his mind by playing chess and i know that the way that he plays chess is a reflexion of the way he does everything. How we do anything is how we do everything. Maybe is too psychoanalytical for just a friendly game of chess but I like to think that.
Mindset going into the match and knowing that he already lost to A-Kid
I felt like I had a point to prove. When he came to NXT UK I played the role of his ‘mentor’ and his friend. Going into that second match that I lost to A-kid I was aware that I was ‘superior’ and I was going to win but sadly that wasn’t the reality; the reality was that I widely understimate how A-Kid grew since our first encounter. He tought me a very important lesson in humility and since then I’ve been in this path of learning and adapting to whataver situation life throws me because, again, how we do anything is how we do everything.
The sad reality is that I lost but I made a good job of turned the shit into gold and I feel like that. I took that sadness and loss into a lesson that in the long run benefited me and eventually led me to beat him for the Heritage Cup Champion.
Similarities and differences between the matches with A-Kid and the matches with Pete Dunne
Pete Dunne is an entity by his own. He really is. For me he is the most untouchable professional wrestler that I’ve seen today. Nobody can do Pete Dunne better than Pete Dunne. He is like a Fit Finlay but with a modern day twist. Very technical but very nasty and mean and the matches with A-Kid are much nicer than wrestling Pete. With A-Kid he will push but he won’t push that hard.
Going into the matches with A-Kid we sat down and I made the comment that, as good as he is, he is still naif to the harsh realities of wrestling. In the same that my lost to A-Kid was a huge lesson for me, I hope that his lost to me would do the same for him and will get back stronger. Hopefully in the future we can have a rematch and the we can really see who is the better wrestler.
The “Big picture” as Champion
‘Big picture’ for me is for professional wrestling as a whole to be better off for my contribuition to it. I want my matches to be studied for the rest of time. I want people to watch my matches through anytime period and be able to appreciate the art that goes into it and I know that A-Kid had very similar intentions. I feel like A-Kid was very selfsensitive in the way that the match was about him and being the Heritage Cup Champion but for me the match was about the ‘Big Picture’ about professional wrestling and that was the driving force that let me to achieving the Heritage Cup.
Return of the European Championship and defend it around Europe
I am open to everything and attached to nothing. I am always open to thing growing and bigger and better. If the European Championship being back means that NXT UK is a touring brand with titles defences all over the continent that to me sounds very appealing, living the dream basically. NXT UK for me is the dream I didn’t know that I wanted. I always had in ming that I wanted to go to United States and wrestle at WrestleMania for the World Heavyweight Championship but know I get to live my dream being a professional wrestler at home and if being a touring brand around Europe means something new I am more than happy to help wrestling expand in that way, to help it grow and become as big and creative and fun as it can possibly be.
About ViBe & Wrestling
Founded in 2019, ViBe & Wrestling is known in the wrestling business for our quality product and partnerships with WWE (USA), Súper Luchas (México), Marca (Spain) or 2K (Spain). We bring the sports entertainment to the major newspapers and achieved historic interviews like the one with THE UNDERTAKER for the first time in the spanish journalism history. We teamed up in the past with Funko, AtresMedia, Panini or Topps in order to help them to make a bigger impact in the spanish and LATAM market.
Credit Vicente Beltrán of ViBe & Wrestling for the transcripts.
