A new Progress Atlas Champion was crowned.
At Progress Chapter 183: Hundred Volts, Mike D Vecchio walked in as the Atlas Champion, but he couldn’t leave the Progress show as one. Gene Munny ended up winning a Triple Threat match between him, Mike, and Will Kroos. It was an extremely short reign for Mike as he won the belt last month at PROGRESS Chapter 182: Stay Humble, but his short reign is for good reason.
Reportedly, Mike D Vecchio is WWE bound. Vecchio had a recent tryout with the company and according to Fightful Select, European tryouts will start with WWE in September. There’s talk that WWE could finally launch the NXT Europe brand that the company has been talking about for years, but that hasn’t been fully confirmed just yet.
Mike D Vecchio has been going on a farewell tour throughout the month. Progress gave him a standing ovation following his three way match last night. However, he also said goodbye to wXw Germany where him & Planet Gojirah (Marc Empire & Robert Dreissker) beat Aigle Blanc & The Grind (Laurance Roman & Nick Schreier).
Vecchio has been in the business for 13 years now. The 29-year-old has mainly competed overseas with Progress, Revolution Pro Wrestling, and All Japan Pro Wrestling being his main destinations. Again, it hasn’t been confirmed that WWE is finally moving forward with NXT Europe, but the company’s focus on international talent lately would seem to suggest them going into that direction.
WWE has previously tried the international branding before - NXT UK. This was actually a great promotion that had consistent bangers each and every week, but the problem was that people just weren’t watching. It was purely a WWE Network exclusive and despite the buzz that NXT UK received, it was more of a niche product. Triple H stated that some of the main reasons he shut down NXT UK was due to COVID, which is certainly possible, but there’s also rumors that he did in hopes of rebranding the NXT show into NXT Europe. We’ll surely find out down the line.