There are 5,200 miles between the capitals of Thailand and Austria. Very little is shared between the two countries’ cultures; each has its own distinct histories, languages, and art. But they do have at least one thing in common: Each has produced a devastating opponent who’ll ruin your afternoon if you make a simple misstep. In Thailand’s case, it’s Capcom’s turbo terror, part-time crime boss, and full-screen scrambler, the original final boss: Sagat. You stand back? Fireballs to the neck and knees! You rush in? Tiger Knee directly to the noggin. AND IF YOU JUMP? A Tiger Uppercut is waiting to tuck your scalp into your shoulder blades. There’s no right move, no right way, no remorse. In a clear sign of gamesmanship, Austria would produce its own unstoppable, incalculable combatant 10 whole days before the world first fought in the street—the Ring General we all know as Gunther.
It’s almost noon on a Tuesday. I haven’t checked in with anyone to see if the guy’s OK, but I’ve seen the pictures: Finn Bálor’s chest and shoulders look like a half-cooked Totino’s Party Pizza after he took a thorough beatdown in the previous night’s main event of Raw. On the flip side, his opponent sits in a brightly lit conference room, hair freshly cut and perfectly parted, his fitted black tee looking like an endless cave against the all-white walls behind him. He’s grinning, not with the arrogant smirk of overconfidence, but with the visible understanding of another job well done. Gunther is as calculated as he is confident, and every accomplishment to date has been toward one goal: to show the world that there’s no one out there doing pro wrestling like he does.
Wrestling moves can be effective and exciting without being complicated and contrived (see Samoa Joe’s tried-and-true defense against top-rope flying attacks), and with Gunther, they can set the tone for entire evenings. The sleeper hold—the move you’d never use in 2K but always use on your little cousin—would seem to have very little place in today’s high-octane, big-budgeted WWE. But this past Monday night, its constant application from all angles put WWE’s inaugural Universal champion out, no dinner, no shower, no bedtime story. “It depends on the opponent,” Gunther says, thinking of the many ways he’s ended evenings for so many of his peers. “[With me and Bálor], there’s a difference in height and weight. So putting a sleeper hold on him and putting my whole weight on his back is a very logical thing, while lifting him up and giving him the chance to use his athleticism to escape or counter that is less [logical]. So that was my approach to it. That’s how I usually go about all the matches I have.” In a world built on forgoing rhymes and forsaking reason, Gunther stresses the function of realism, which is why many of his moves—typically labeled as transition moves—tend to transcend. He’ll take your head off with a lariat or violate your vertebrae with a powerbomb or a Boston crab, and that’s it. No dramatic kicking out, no charging up, no surviving and thriving; it’s a wrap, thanks for coming, see you soon.
Necessity might be the mother of invention, but passion breeds aesthetic excellence. This fully realized world killer wasn’t born overnight—it’s been a decades-long journey for Gunther to get to this place. Gunther played soccer until he was 16, but even while he was honing his goalkeeping skills, he was watching and absorbing the jarring, deliberate grappling style popularized by All Japan Pro Wrestling throughout the 1990s. “[That was a very] sports-focused presentation. I think that just stuck with me because I could really identify with that,” Gunther explains before listing legends he would study when watching All Japan. “[Kenta] Kobashi, [Toshiaki] Kawada, Stan Hansen, Terry Gordy, Gary Albright,” Gunther declares. “I think if the educated fan watches my matches, [they] can pretty much pick [up on] a lot of the things I do.” Trainer Michael Kovac (who competed throughout Austria and Germany at the amateur tournament level) would emphasize making everything look as hard-hitting as possible, regardless of system or imprint. “I was just taught that way from the get-go,” Gunther states.
There’s nothing like a winning streak in sports, wrestling, or life. That feeling of sustained success is only matched by the new avenues it can open for you. Gunther would initially challenge (and defeat) Ricochet for the WWE Intercontinental Championship on the June 10, 2022, episode of SmackDown. The newest piece on the board, he seemed poised for a solid run of good-to-great matches and then a transition into something else, like most top prospects before him. What Gunther actually put into motion was the most remarkable run the championship has seen to date, both in the quality of matches and in the proper development of a high-caliber talent. He’d hold the title for 666 days, defending it against all-time talents such as Shinsuke Nakamura, Sheamus, and Drew McIntyre while shining a light on the solo acts of career tag team wrestlers such as Chad Gable and Jey Uso. But with all the shared “match of the year” nominations and individual accolades, there’s one feud during that run that sticks out to him the most: the one that gave him a chance to see just how far he’d come in his career.
“I would say the matches I had with Miz were something that was very important for me,” Gunther says. “Miz is the total opposite of me. It’s 100 percent the other side of professional wrestling than I am. I was really proud of the matches we had to get to those really competitive, dramatic matches. … The people ate it up. They were there for it.” It isn’t just their in-ring work that makes Gunther hold their feud in high regard; it’s how Miz forced Gunther to develop his promos. “Miz was a fantastic counterpart because he’s one of the best in doing that ever on the microphone. He’s maybe the most versatile talent the company has. That was a big challenge for me.” In real time, it was clear we were seeing something special. That run, with all those incredible moments, likely reached its apex last year at WrestleMania 39, in Gunther’s Triple Threat defense against McIntyre and Sheamus. The reign achieved a fitting end when Sami Zayn got his biggest main-roster singles victory, bringing Gunther’s Intercontinental title run to a close in Philadelphia at WrestleMania XL. For Gunther, it’s way easier to reflect on that reign than it was to experience it. While he knows the quality of his work, it is still a work in progress. “When you’re in the midst of it, when you are the guy doing all of that, it’s way less exciting for yourself than it is for everybody else watching.”
In his mind, this run, and any run at this level, was never in the cards. After a failed 2012 WWE tryout (“horrible,” Gunther admits), he spent his formative years competing under his given first name (stylized as WALTER) in Britain’s Revolution Pro and Progress promotions and continued to be one of the critical cogs in Germany’s Westside Xtreme Wrestling (stylized as wXw). He credits his time at wXw (and learning the business side of pro wrestling) as the likely reason WWE took a second look his way. “We just really started to professionalize the operation we had going there. We had a lot of people coming over that used to work in WWE or had a big career, just to feed off their knowledge. Then the shows got better, and to somebody that’s in the business and he’s observing companies and how they run their business, it’s pretty easy for them to understand what the approach is.” Toward the end of the 2010s, he’d become a mainstay on the North American independent scene, with his Evolve and Pro Wrestling Guerrilla dates giving him reps against the talent he’d face later on, such as Adam Cole and the former Jonah Rock. Even after signing his WWE deal in late 2018, he expected to compete solely at the NXT level against familiar competition. “I never saw myself being on the main roster,” Gunther explains. “I always felt like I’m not going to fit in there.” Gunther’s wrestling style was unfamiliar, not only to fans who hadn’t seen his work, but also to those who had seen other wrestlers move into the WWE system. There’s always this fear that your favorite band will lose their edge, that they must conform to what is safe or acceptable once they sign their major deal. Gunther says he has never been asked to be anyone but himself at any of his WWE stops to date. “Nobody ever in WWE told me to change anything,” he says. “Nobody does [what I do] better than me. And that’s what I have to offer. I’m not that wrestler that comes out of this system that something doesn’t work, and next week I have a new character; that won’t happen in my case because I’m myself.” And that was Gunther’s biggest obstacle: He didn’t know if it was possible to be himself and make it to the main roster.
Once the possibility became a reality, Gunther made his first real stylistic decision: to change his physique. He’d emulated so much of what the Kawadas and Gordys of his youth championed, from their sheer physicality to their imposing size and strength, so the idea of losing weight and toning never struck his trainers, producers, or bosses. He was looking to create something new for a brand-new audience. “[The hard-core viewers], they totally get that romantic wrestling aspect about a beer-belly guy that just beats people up because it’s just been the case in Japan for so long,” Gunther explains. “I always thought that wouldn’t transcend well with the audience that you can reach on the main roster, where it’s literally just in the eye of the mainstream public. I just wanted to bring the best version of myself.”
Following his record-setting reign with a King of the Ring victory, Gunther earned an automatic shot at Damian Priest’s World Heavyweight Championship at SummerSlam. He’s been at or near the apex many times, whether it’s as the top champion of the hottest independent promotion, the ruler of the entirety of NXT UK, or the last man eliminated from the Royal Rumble match. But, now, he’s entering rarefied air. He’s after a championship that’s a spiritual successor to the world titles of Jim Crockett Promotions, NWA, and WCW, which he followed through All Japan. So, while everything up until now has almost been expected, the chance at this championship has Gunther hyper-focused and hyperaware.
“Well, if I win it, it’s going to be the greatest accomplishment of my career,” Gunther proclaims. “It means that’s what it says, the ‘world’s heavyweight champion.’ I think that’s the highest prize, the greatest prize that there is to achieve or to win.”
“We all do [this] to become a champion eventually one day and be on top and represent the company and be the face of a brand and be the face of professional wrestling to a certain degree. And that’s a big responsibility but also [a] big privilege. But that’s all secondary now, because I have a match on Saturday against Damian Priest, and that’s where my focus is.”
Cameron Hawkins writes about pro wrestling, Blade II, and obscure ’90s sitcoms for Pro Wrestling Torch, Pro Wrestling Illustrated, and FanSided DDT. You can follow him on Twitter at @CeeHawk.
