During the latest edition of the “After the Bell with Corey Graves” podcast, WALTER commented on signing with WWE, working for the NXT UK brand, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On making the transition from independent wrestling to WWE: “First of all, I was never thinking about signing with WWE. That was never a goal. I was happy in the process. I think sometimes you get lost too much when you think about the future. I have to force myself to do it as well. Sometimes your brain is way ahead of you. I was never too keen about leaving Germany, leaving Europe to live in the United States. It’s a big step. I think most of the other wrestlers are willing to do it because it was their goal from day one or maybe early in their career that’s where they wanted to go. For me, for the most time in my life, it was never a realistic thing that I could ever actually wrestle for WWE or something like that. When I started 10 years before, the wrestling world was very different. WWE was very protected or isolated from everybody else. It was so difficult to get into WWE, and they opened up a few years ago and actually realized how much talent there is out there to work with.”
On joining NXT UK: “When everything came to talks with NXT UK at first, they talked to me right when it started and I was doing really well on the indies, and I just wanted to see what else comes up. I just said wait and see what happens. When NXT UK came up, we talked again, and it sounded like obviously the focus is to build something in Europe and the UK is the logical first step in that process because England was the hottest place in Europe for wrestling.”
On being the face of the WWE scene in the UK as the NXT UK Champion: “It’s a big responsibility, of course. I always feel that as the NXT UK champion, I will be the one that when I have a match, my match will be seen by the most people out of everybody else from NXT UK. There comes a responsibility with that to actually showcase what European wrestling is all about. That’s something I would say that I’m really proud of. I never had to change for WWE. I’m still the same person I was three years ago when I worked for everybody else, and just to be able to stick with that and still showcase wrestling the way that I think is right in my way, and actually getting the attention for it, and get the trust of people in WWE for it, that’s a nice accomplishment.”
(h/t – 411 Wrestling)
