WWE’s NXT UK commentary team announced on this week’s episode that, following next week’s show, former NXT UK Champion Walter will be leaving the brand and joining NXT 2.0 here in the United States. “The Ring General” signed with WWE in 2019 but had repeatedly stated in interviews that he had no interest living in the US and was happy competing overseas on NXT’s second brand. He still made the occasional appearances on NXT with the rest of his Imperium faction (most recently at New Year’s Evil on Tuesday) and even had a few NXT UK Championship matches during his historic 870-day run. His final NXT UK match will be against Nathan Frazier (fka Ben Carter).
The Austrian’s title reign finally ended at NXT TakeOver 36 this past August in a Match of the Year contender with Ilja Dragunov. Triple H has spoken incredibly high of the big man in the past, going so far as to compare him to Brock Lesnar on a January 2021 episode of The Bump.
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“It is tough to bet against Walter,” he said “Anyone who has watched him over the last few years, anyone who has recently watched him against Ilja [Dragunov], one of the most physically imposing, physically dominating performers out there. There’s no wasted movement, he’s not flashy, he doesn’t care about how it looks, he’s just effective. That said, you’ve seen it in the past with other talent like Brock Lesnar.
“Brock has struggled a lot of times with more smaller guys, speed kills,” he continued.”You would watch Brock Lesnar sometimes step in the ring with Daniel Bryan and have a much more difficult time, Daniel Bryan would get much more in because Brock couldn’t strike as hard and as fast, he would have to catch him first and find his way. In that process, he would eat a lot of shots, now it would take a lot of shots from Daniel Bryan’s size to knock Brock Lesnar down, but he ate a lot of shots to get one in. Walter just has to sustain that.”
