WWE U.K Champion Pete Dunne was in action on Sunday night for Progress Wrestling and ended up dropping his longest held championship. Despite holding the WWE‘s new U.K. title, Dunne has been the reigning Progress world champion since November of 2016 and has continued to work their shows.
That all came to an end on Sunday night, as Dunne defended his belt against Travis Banks at Progress: Chapter 55 at Alexandra Palace, London. Chapter 55 was promoted as the biggest show of the year for Progress, and they also announced during the broadcast that they will be running the Wembley SSE Arena next September. That arena holds over 12,000 people and shows the tremendous growth that Progress has experienced in 2017.
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In the main event of the night, Dunne took on Banks and lost via submission. This capped off what was reported to be an excellent show that also involved people like Marty Scurll, Zack Sabre Jr., Matt Riddle, and Jimmy Havoc. Additionally, WWE’s U.K. stars Trent Seven and Tyler Bate dropped the Progress tag team championships on the show.
If you’ve never seen Progress before, they put their shows on demand within about a week via their website. All signs point to this being a must-see show.
@Travis_BanksPW is the new @ThisIs_Progress world champion!!!#AllyPally #ChaseTheSun pic.twitter.com/1uxYOanDCh
— Jon (@Jon_Wrestling) September 10, 2017
Dunne, despite his title loss, continues to be one of the brightest young stars in the wrestling business. His days with the Progress championship were obviously numbered given his increased involvement with WWE.
WWE still has plans to develop a U.K. television show for airing on the WWE Network in the near future. The show would center around the U.K. title and feature almost exclusively U.K. talent, just like the U.K. championship tournament did earlier this year.
According to a recent report in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, WWE is planning on having the U.K. television show start before the end of the year. Original plans were for tapings to start for the show in June, but that was delayed for several reasons. As we’ve reported in the past here at Pop Culture, WWE has undergone some budget cuts this year due to profits falling short of their initial goals. It’s thought that the U.K. television show was delayed during those cuts. Also, the U.K. tournament that was produced earlier this year supposedly lost money when all of the production and travel was factored in.
