Matthew Klink (@klinkmatt)

January 15, 2019

If you’re a fan of all things pro wrestling, I hope you did yourself a favor and you hunkered down for a couple of hours on your couch, to catch NXT UK TakeOver Blackpool. I tell you what, that was a real kick in the nuts having to type that every time I wanted to post to twitter

Anywho!

As the WWE loves to do, they took this opportunity (of having avid NXT UK fans, cautious main event fans and casual WWE fans all watching the same show) to put on one hell of a wrestling show. The wrestling was top notch. The in-ring storytelling was through the roof. And the characters found a way to win you over or fill you with hate, depending on the side of the heel/face line they stood.

Beyond the great wrestling matches was one heck of a surprise! And that was the debut of that Austrian Assassin, Walter. For those of you that don’t know, Walter isn’t making his way through the UK Performance Center. He’s been crushing skulls and caving in chests for years and now he plans to do the same to Pete Dunne.

Austrian Bruiser, Walter

The WWE website left quite a bit to imagination, but dubbing him an indie darling and saying he had bounced around the European Market for a while. This is not only inaccurate, but does no justice to his career or setup his potential feuds.

Walter is still a globetrotting “indie darling”, considering he still has matches set for next month with Over the Top Wrestling on February 3rd and 17th. One of which is booked against the newly acquired All Elite Wrestling talent, Pac (formerly Neville of the WWE).

Walter’s future should most assuredly include some championship gold and that is because of Walter’s incredible and intimidating stature, but also because of the 10 years of professional wrestling experience.

Walter’s Over 10 Years in Pro Wrestling

Walter started his professional career over 10 years ago at Westside Xtreme Wrestling.

The likes include:

• Westside Xtreme Wrestling

• Progress Wrestling

• Evolve

• PWG (Pro Wrestling Guerrilla)

• Defiant Wrestling

He currently keeps his relationship strong with wXw as the head trainer for the brand, but who knows what’s next for that?

He won wXw Unified World Wrestling Championship in 2010. After winning and losing the title over the next two years, Walter defended his championship against El Generico, losing in May of 2012. El Generico, of course, being the former character of WWE talent, Sami Zayn.

While at wXw, Walter created a rivalry with Zack Sabre Jr and ended up going against him in multiple wrestling programs. The well-known PWG, or Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, was where the two met in a “five star” match (awarded by Dave Meltzer) at PWG’s All-Star Weekend 13.

That same weekend included losses to the new NXT Superstar Keith Lee as well as the One-and-Only, Ricochet. His battles with NXT superstars continued a year ago, when Walter challenged the Chosen Bros for the PWG World Tag Team Championships. The Chosen Bros? You guessed! The King of Bros, Matt Riddle was the winner of that match.

Walter’s most relevant experiences (in regards to having a relation to NXT UK) occured in 2016, when Walters and Ringkampf (Walter, Axel Dieter Jr. and Timothy Thatcher) challenged British Strong Style (Pete Dunne, Trent Seven, and Tyler Bate) for all of their championships. Although unsuccessful, this was the first time the seed (of how great Walter would look performing with British Strong Style) was planted.

Walter’s Future

Going forward, Walter will be sure to challenge Pete Dunne for his UK Championship. As Pete Dunne’s title reign continues to grow, even I believed Joe Coffey was going to end it this past weekend at TakeOver Blackpool.

It’ll be fun to not only see Walter and Pete Dunne try to smash each other’s hands through their opponent’s chest. But after they’re done bruising and scarring each other, Walter would also be welcome to re-ignite some feuds from PWG (and more recently in his stint with Evolve) to take on Matt Riddle and Keith Lee.

We wrote a while back about how exciting it was to Dominik Dijakovic in NXT and how he, Keith Lee, and Riddle should have a big 2019. But if we pivot our heads back over to Europe, there is no denying that Walter will be a dominating force to reckoned with.