{"id":35167,"date":"2019-01-12T20:12:23","date_gmt":"2019-01-13T01:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=35167"},"modified":"2019-06-08T22:47:39","modified_gmt":"2019-06-09T02:47:39","slug":"whos-walter-a-look-at-nxt-uks-newest-megastar-videos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2019\/01\/12\/whos-walter-a-look-at-nxt-uks-newest-megastar-videos\/","title":{"rendered":"Who&#8217;s WALTER? A Look at NXT UK&#8217;s Newest Megastar (VIDEOS)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It was a moment that has been rumored, squashed, and rumored again, but on Saturday night in Blackpool, England, it became an absolute reality. Following a 30 minute plus battle against &#8220;The Iron King&#8221; <strong>Joe Coffey<\/strong> of Gallus, <strong>Pete Dunne<\/strong> retained the WWE UK Championship in an absolute classic. But in the dying moments of the first ever <em><strong>NXT UK TakeOver<\/strong><\/em>, a new face emerged as the next threat to Dunne&#8217;s 600+ day reign as UK Champion &#8211; the Austrian brute known the world over simply as <strong>WALTER<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"WALTER debuts by crashing Pete Dunne&#039;s victory celebration: NXT UK TakeOver: Blackpool (WWE Network)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7Pa0W4BUVZ8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Arguably the best wrestler of 2018, the European megastar is a longtime staple of Germany&#8217;s <strong>Westside Xtreme Wrestling (wXw)<\/strong> since he debuted with the company in 2007. Originally known as <strong>Big Van Walter<\/strong>, it only took him three years to win the wXw Unified World Wrestling Championship, a title he&#8217;s held on three occasions.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Alexander Wolfe (Axel Tischer) vs. WALTER (wXw 16 Carat Gold 2014)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IdCrrF3nw9c?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In 2012, WALTER joined forces with fellow Austrian <strong>Robert Dreissker<\/strong> (now known as <strong>Avalanche<\/strong>) to form <strong>The<\/strong> <strong>AUTsiders,<\/strong> capturing tag team gold in wXw and <strong>German Stampede Wrestling (GSW)<\/strong>. In 2015, he would form a short alliance with an emerging UK star named <strong>Zack Sabre Jr.<\/strong>, capturing wXw tag team titles once again.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=gC3zdxzuY38<\/p>\n<p>In 2016, he would join one of Europe&#8217;s most dominant stables of the past few years, <strong>Ringkampf<\/strong>, alongside &#8220;Ax Man&#8221; <strong>Axel Tischer<\/strong> (now WWE&#8217;s Alexander Wolfe), <strong>Axel Dieter Jr.<\/strong> (now NXT&#8217;s Marcel Barthel) and <strong>Timothy Thatcher<\/strong>. Ringkampf dominated wXw for years, with WALTER and Thatcher capturing the wXw Tag Team titles in 2017.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"&quot;We&#039;re here to restore the honour of this sport&quot;\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zM0HvvNoWys?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In 2015, WALTER began to travel outside of Germany with more regularity, making his debut with <strong>PROGRESS Wrestling<\/strong>, and the following year he began to work with <strong>RevPro<\/strong> again (he&#8217;d wrestled previously for the company back in 2012). In 2017, he would begin his conquest in America, working with <strong>EVOLVE<\/strong> and <strong>Pro Wrestling Guerrilla (PWG)<\/strong>, having match of the year candidates with the likes of <strong>Keith Lee<\/strong> and <strong>Matt Riddle.<\/strong> By the end of 2017, the world was plenty aware of what WALTER could do.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TwcGco1mZ04&#038;t=19s<\/p>\n<p>This past year saw WALTER absolutely explode on the international circuit. He&#8217;d been a 2x PROGRESS Atlas Champion in 2017, but in 2018 he would claim the PROGRESS World Championship, a belt he still holds to this day, over 170 days. In April of 2018, he would win the PWG World Championship, and in August, defeated NXT UK&#8217;s <strong>Jordan Devlin<\/strong> for the <strong>Over The Top (OTT) World Championship<\/strong> in Ireland. And 2018 was the year that WALTER <a href=\"http:\/\/lastwordonprowrestling.com\/2018\/09\/28\/pco-vs-walter-a-feud-a-decade-in-the-making\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">rekindled a 10-year rivalry with <strong>Pierre Carl Ouellette (PCO)<\/strong><\/a> which saw the two have several epic encounters throughout the year, <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/2018\/05\/03\/pco-the-redemption-of-pierre-carl-ouellette\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">kickstarting PCO&#8217;s monstrous comeback year.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"\ud83d\udea8Free Match\ud83d\udea8 Jordan Devlin Vs Walter #WrestleRama2\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cZVtb7Ua3E4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>With WWE partnering with Germany&#8217;s wXw &#8211; where WALTER is also head trainer of the wXw Wrestling Academy &#8211; WALTER is expected to maintain his European indie presence in wXw, PROGRESS and the like, while now becoming a focal point for NXT UK (and a potential future NXT Germany). If you&#8217;ve never seen WALTER in action, you&#8217;re in for a treat.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"FREE MATCH, Will Ospreay Vs Walter from Over The Top Wrestling\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FPTemrD73-w?start=12&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was a moment that has been rumored, squashed, and rumored again, but on Saturday night in Blackpool, England, it became an absolute reality. Following a 30 minute plus battle against &#8220;The Iron King&#8221; Joe Coffey of Gallus, Pete Dunne retained the WWE UK Championship in an absolute classic. But in the dying moments of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":649,"featured_media":35169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5336,3],"tags":[1248,4196],"class_list":["post-35167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-nxt-uk","category-wwe-universe","tag-walter","tag-nxt-uk-takeover-blackpool"],"modified_by":"Ben Kerr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}