Gunther has had quite the run over the last few years as he’s won the Intercontinental Championship, World Heavyweight Championship, and he’s also retired multiple legends. In the summer of 2025, Gunther retired Goldberg, in December of 2025 he retired John Cena, and he retired AJ Styles when he defeated Styles at the Royal Rumble back in January.
While talking about The Phenomenal One’s retirement on WWE Retrospective, Gunther explained why retiring AJ Styles was more important to him than retiring John Cena.
“AJ is kind of different where it’s like, you had Goldberg and John Cena. There was the WCW legend Goldberg, and then you have the guy that stands for WWE, and then you have AJ, who’s somewhat a little more similar to me when it comes to his career. He had a great run here, but a lot of the stuff that people love him for happened before WWE.
He’s one of those guys, what I talked about before. The generation in wrestling that I came up with, we looked up to guys like AJ Styles. I remember when he was in New Japan, we always watched his big matches there. They were fantastic and stuff. There was a time when I was really grinding and developing. There was stuff I would watch, so I always had so much respect for AJ’s work.
That almost kind of felt, 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 to ruin the last run he has, it was a lot of fun.”