The Forbidden Lore Of WWE’s Gunther
WALTER - with his frame, chops, and mastery of the absurdly stiff, slow-burn epic - felt destined to get to the top in Japan. What you might not know is that he spent some time in Japan in his early years as a dancing comedy character named Gha-cha-ping for the Pro Wrestling Zero1 outfit. Not much is known about the character, not that there’s likely to be any deep lore about it. This was simply Gunther on an early tour, dressed in green with his hair dyed the same colour, acting like a big enthusiastic idiot. He was just a kid - the same kid who looked charmingly bashful under the wing of Colt Cabana years and years ago. Later on, WALTER was a guy who came out to rock music because he liked it before Timothy Thatcher urged him to enter the ring to Dvořák and accentuate his distinctive essence.
Everything is a gimmick, a con, in the pro wrestling game. CM Punk is the establishment now, happy to be in WWE, when he built his brand as a renegade disruptor. Steve Austin enjoys a glass of wine as much as a can of beer.
Gunther wears two expressions on his face: stoic determination and a gloating smile. When he deviates from his traditional black trunks, he only ever adopts a colour scheme that looks classy: the elegant burgundy reserved for the technical specialist; a deep, stylish blue. He wears his hair with a timeless sweep. You can imagine him, in his youth, studying tape from Japan and refusing to socialise. He wrestles a style that would fit many glittering eras, understanding the less-is-more approach that never goes out of fashion.
He looks and feels like the gimmick to the ideal extent that it feels nothing like a gimmick - and yet, it is. This is a guy who dressed up like the wrestlers he buries in 2007.
That Gunther is taken as seriously as he himself takes it is the ultimate endorsement of his magnificent character work.