"Not What I Enjoyed" - Gunther Shoots On Pre-Triple H WWE
Record-breaking former Intercontinental Champion speaks on Triple H's vision for him and WWE
Former Intercontinental Champion Gunther has spoken candidly about how he viewed WWE before Triple H took the reins in 2022.
The Imperium leader worked under Vince McMahon's lone creative vision for just four months before the former Chairman resigned in disgrace, resulting in Paul Levesque overseeing almost all of his time on the main roster thus far.
This, somewhat predictably has suited Gunther down to the ground. Speaking to Gorilla Position (h/t Fightful), he said;
"...it was one of the reasons why, for a long time I didn't want to go to the US. The product before Triple H was not what I enjoyed. I just didn't want to be part of that. I am who I am and that's what I can do best. A big part of that is I need to have my time in the ring and have that time to put on the matches I can put on. That chance would not be there under the old regime. With Triple H, he always saw that in me, and he always had that vision for me. I got lucky that a lot of things in my career took place at the right time. It was a little bit of a leap of faith when I first made the move over. Everything worked out in the end."
'Der Ring General's main roster run has been an unqualified - if at times surprising - success story. Called up in April 2022, he became Intercontinental Champion two months later and held onto it for 666 days before losing to Sami Zayn at WrestleMania 40. He smashed the Honky Tonk Man's longevity record in the process and followed through on broken promises made by just about every Champion since the late-1990s, rebuilding the prestige of the secondary strap thanks to a host of brilliant and believable title defences.
Gunther - still going by Walter - had something of an infamous WWE television debut, losing a singles match by disqualification to Seth Rollins in November 2019 before joining up with the rest of Imperium to lose to Rollins, Owens and The Street Profits on the same night. From there he worked the Survivor Series as part of "Team NXT" in which he was the first man eliminated after also being out-chopped by Drew McIntyre. As reigning NXT UK Champion at the time, the pandemic fortuitously restricted him to the BT Sports studio era of the show before moving over to the black-and-gold brand in 2021 before renaming himself Gunther on the 2.0 version of the show in January 2022.