AEW Star Responds To Backlash Over GUNTHER WWE Tweet

AEW, WWE

An AEW star has taken time to respond to continued social media backlash regarding a tweet made regarding WWE Intercontinental Champion GUNTHER.

While retrospectively not a decision that seems so bad now, in January 2022, WWE made the decision to change former NXT UK Champion WALTER’s name to GUNTHER on an episode of NXT, which was heavily criticized at the time.

According to a January 18, 2022 WWE trademark filing, GUNTHER was originally set to become Gunther Stark, however, the company received backlash when it was discovered this name was the same as an actual former Nazi commander.

This forced WWE to abandon the ‘Stark’ part of the name and proceed with the change to just GUNTHER, which the Austrian has used to this day.

Despite WWE’s pivot to remove ‘Stark’ the change was still not welcomed at the time by many fans and even led to AEW star Keith Lee seemingly sending his condolences to the Ring General on Twitter, saying:

Man….if what I’m hearing is real…. Poor Walter.

Since then however, GUNTHER has gone on to achieve great success in WWE and many have come to embrace his newer name, which has also unfortunately led to Lee’s tweet to be a target of ridicule with today’s added hindsight.

While Lee has once addressed this before earlier this year, he would once again post about the old tweet when a fan came to his defence recently for it.

The Twitter user pointed out that Lee’s comments were a common sentiment of many fans at the time, making it unfair that he was still “catching strays” for his January 2022 post to this day.

Which led to Lee posting a tweet suggesting that perhaps fans have been wrong about the context and direction of his original tweet this whole time:

According to the ones who run this, I “still catch strays.” Willful ignorance of people who created their own narrative of that tweet.

It is…. odd… that people seem to die on the hill of believing I’d tweet about a name change…. in an industry littered with them lol.

Despite suggesting as such, Lee did not elaborate as to what the reasoning behind the original tweet was if it was not in fact in reference to the name change.

You can view Lee’s response to the same tweet earlier this year at this link here.

According to the ones who run this, I "still catch strays." Willful ignorance of people who created their own narrative of that tweet.

It is…. odd… that people seem to die on the hill of believing I'd tweet about a name change…. in an industry littered with them lol. https://t.co/DXkAV3dDqd

— Excellent Lee (@RealKeithLee) October 27, 2023

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• GUNTHER
• keith lee
• AEW
• wwe

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