At Night Two of PWG All Star Weekend 14 tonight, in one of the final PWG events at American Legion in Reseda, California, Germany’s indie sensation WALTER defeated PWG Champion Keith Lee and Jonah Rock in a triple threat match for to become the new PWG World Heavyweight Champion. It marks WALTER’s fourth World title (having won the wXw Unified World Wrestling Championship on three occasions) and first North American belt. He’s also a two time (and reigning) PROGRESS Atlas Champion and 3x wXw World Tag Team Champion. The title change comes one night after The Rascalz (Dezmond Xavier & Zachary Wentz) defeated The Chosen Bros (Matt Riddle & Jeff Cobb) to become the new PWG World Tag Team Champions.
https://twitter.com/madmadref/status/987928343671488513
It caps off an already huge year for WALTER, who exploded out of the German scene in 2015, after spending the previous decade wrestling primarily in Germany with wXw. Since debuting with PROGRESS in 2015, he’s ventured out to other indie promotions in the UK scene such as RevPro and Defiant Wrestling, and then making his US indie debut at EVOLVE 90 last August and also working with PWG (debuting at last year’s Battle of Los Angeles), Beyond, and Game Changer Wrestling (GCW). As part of the faction Ringkampf, alongside SaNiTy’s Alexander Wolfe, NXT prospect Marcel Barthel (aka Axel Dieter Jr) and Timothy Thatcher, WALTER has become one of Europe’s biggest stars. Over WrestleMania weekend, WALTER also took part in a match against Kassius Ohno at WrestleMania Axxess. WALTER had previously faced Ohno, when he was known as Chris Hero, three times before – twice in wXw (at 16 Carat Gold in 2010 and a wXw World title defence at wXw 14th Anniversary Show in 2014) and once in the PROGRESS Super Strong Style 16 tournament in 2016.
Post match @RealKeithLee cuts a promo and says he hopes @WalterAUT is the champ time did not allow him to be. #PWG #ASW14 pic.twitter.com/ODOB634747
— SoCal UNCENSORED (@socaluncensored) April 22, 2018
With WALTER’s win, he ends Keith Lee’s PWG World title reign at just 30 days, the shortest reign of any defending PWG World Champion (Daniel Bryan is the only shorter reign, but he vacated his second PWG World title immediately following his defeat of Chris Hero due to signing with the WWE and being unable to defend it). Ironically, both WALTER and Keith Lee were linked together in reports that both men had been offered WWE deals (which both denied at the time). Lee’s involvement with WWE at WrestleMania Axxess this year (he defended the WWN Championship against Kassius Ohno one night and lost to Lars Sullivan on another) and the fact he’s dropped both his World titles (he lost his WWN Championship to Austin Theory just two weeks ago as well) will surely start the rumor mills churning that it’s a sign Lee’s signing may actually be true.
