Spotlight: 'Download Festival 2019: WWE NXT Live'

Download Festival is well known in the UK as the premiere Rock and Metal festival here. Fans travel from all over to attend the festival held at Donington Race Park, home site of the legendary Monsters Of Rock Festival. The various stages there, have seen some of the greatest bands in Hard Rock and Heavy Metal history. But, if you look further down the event poster you might spot something quite surprising.

Over the past few years WWE have been taking over part of the festival, staging bouts to fans who might be looking for a bit of a break in their music entertainment. This year is no different with the wrestling company bringing along talent to tape matches for NXT UK which will air on the WWE Network.

If you're not familiar with NXT then let me try to fill you in. It's a weekly show (with a handful of pay per views) that showcases the WWE's developmental group based in Florida. It's here they take independent wrestlers and get them ready for the company's main roster. About a year ago they added NXT UK to their ranks, focusing mainly on the incredible UK and European talent they've added to their ranks. And this is not the UK wrestling you might remember from the old Big Daddy and World Of Sport days that were a fixture of Saturday afternoons in the seventies and eighties, this is a lot more in keeping with WWE and modern aesthetic.

You have current (at the time of writing) UK champion Walter, Pete "Bruiserweight" Dunne, tag team Moustache Mountain (Trent Seven and Tyler Bates) and current women's UK champ Toni Storm, as well as many others, promising to show Download's Rock and Metal stars a thing or two about performance and putting on a show.

Head over to YouTube or, better still, subscribe to the WWE Network (your first month is free) and see what the fuss is about. Just make sure you're ready to be in the front row for what is guaranteed to be one of the highlights of the Download weekend.

Check out some NXT highlights from Download 2018.

Preview - Scott Hamilton