Published: Mar 8, 2023 by Connel Rumsey | Last Updated: Mar 8, 2023 by Connel Rumsey
Connel has over five years of wrestling journalism experience writing about some of the biggest stories from across the wrestling world. Being a fan for 20 years, Connel has an expansive knowledge from a wide range of various wrestling promotions, including WWE, AEW, NJPW, TNA and Joshi.@connel1405
WWE
Intercontinental Champion Gunther has been one of WWE’s most dominant performs since his call up to the main roster last April.
Gunther dominated NXT UK as WALTER for three years prior to his main roster call up, with his sudden name change in January 2022 taking fans by surprise.
Fans took a while to get used to the change, but Gunther himself spoke about the change to Cheap Heat podcast, where he said that nobody is worried about the change anymore.
He said:
“Well, the thing is like, would I prefer to keep WALTER? Yeah, of course, I’m gonna prefer that. But on the other hand, if you look at a wrestler’s career, a name change is nothing uncommon. That happens. So I was realistic about it.
“And for me, at the end, it was also clear, it’s my real name, and the WWE has obviously interest in whoever they put on the television to put their original stamp on it if that makes sense. So I expected it. Obviously, Gunther is — at the end of the day, if Gunther would be my real name and they would have changed it to WALTER, the reaction would have been exactly the same.
“WALTER is just another older German name. So I think it was more a case of being used to a certain name. And now there’s a new name, but I think, yeah, just as I expected, nobody cares anymore about that. Nobody’s worried about a new name anymore.”
transcription via WrestleZone
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