Gunther is featured in a new special video on WWE’s official YouTube channel dubbed, “WWE Retrospective.”
In the video, “The Career-Killer” reflects on ending the WWE careers of Bill Goldberg, John Cena and AJ Styles in recent months, and how they were different from each other.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the video where he touches on these topics with his thoughts. Also embedded below is a complete video archive.
On comparisons between himself and AJ Styles early in his career: “Everybody kind of knew backstage, it was an open secret that AJ was going to hang up his boots at some point, that’s what I wanted to do next. AJ’s kind of different where it’s like; you have the WCW legend Goldberg, then you have the guy that stands for WWE, then you have AJ who’s somewhat more similar to me because he had a great run here but a lot of the stuff the people love him for happened before WWE. He’s one of those guys that, the generation of wrestling I came up with, we looked up to guys like AJ Styles. I remember that when he was in New Japan and we always watched his big matches there, they were fantastic. There was the time where I was really grinding and developing, there was stuff I would watch.”
On how AJ Styles’ match was more important to him than the John Cena bout: “I always had so much respect for AJ’s work. It almost kind of felt like, from the wrestler purist heart, that felt almost more important for me than the Cena match. But on screen being able to rub it in and try and ruin that last run he has was so much fun.”
On the differences with the Goldberg, John Cena and AJ Styles retirement matches: “That’s the beauty of it because with Goldberg and Cena everyone knew it was their last match, and I think with AJ people weren’t too sure it was going to be his last match. A good chunk of them expected AJ to win and carry on with his career, but he went out on his own terms, that’s something a lot of wrestlers can’t manage, it’s always best to go at a point where people are still going to miss you, not at a point where people are like ‘ah it was time’.’ So hat off to AJ, great career, fantastic wrestler, but I took it away, what can I do.”
Gunther is scheduled to compete against Seth Rollins at WrestleMania 42, which goes down on April 18 and April 19 from Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, NV.
