WALTER, who is the longest-reigning champion in the modern era and the longest and current WWE NXT UK Champion, recently appeared on WWE After The Bell, where he discussed why he was thinking in the past about never signing with WWE.
WALTER said, “First of all, I was never thinking about signing with WWE.” “That was never a goal. I was happy in the process, 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."
“Most of the other wrestlers are willing to do it because it was their goal from day one, maybe early in their career that’s where they want to go. For me, for the most time in my life, it was never a realistic thing that I could actually ever wrestle for WWE or something like that.”
WALTER then talked about WWE being very different before, but then when the promotion opened up a few years ago, he realized how much talent there is out there to work with. WALTER also talked about when NXT UK just started out, that was the first time WWE spoke to him and that was his obvious first step when signing with WWE.
WALTER said, “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."
“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 and I just said wait and see what happens. When NXT UK came up and we talked again, it sounded like okay obviously the focus is to build something in Europe and the UK is the obvious first step in that process because England was the hottest place to [wrestle].”
