Gunther May Fight Unexpected WWE Star At WrestleMania 42

Gunther has had a memorable 2025.

Despite losing the World Heavyweight Championship twice, he will finish the year after retiring as many wrestlers.

In July, he defeated Goldberg at Saturday Night’s Main Event XL in the latter’s final wrestling match. The closing minutes of the bout saw The Ring General apply his sleeper submission, resulting in the veteran fading out.

At Saturday Night’s Main Event XLII, he repeated his heroics, this time against the 17-time World Champion John Cena.

The 38-year-old again applied the sleeper hold, and although Cena offered temporary resistance, he failed to break free and tapped out, resulting in a submission victory for the Austrian.

Unexpected Opponent Proposed For Gunther At WrestleMania 42

2026 will officially kick off the road to WrestleMania, and The Ring General is expected to be in the spotlight.

WWE personality Sam Roberts discussed the potential rivalries for him on his Notsam Wrestling podcast, stating that the Austrian has achieved so much success in 2025 that his 2026 WrestleMania bout need not be a high-profile one.

Instead, he proposed an opponent like Ilja Dragunov, citing an interesting reason.

You know, I think it could be a lot of things. Like I said, I think there’s a world where he gets Cody. I think there’s a world where you don’t have the big Gunther match happen at WrestleMania. I think you can do Gunther vs. Ilja Dragunov at WrestleMania. I think, like, that match was so good in NXT UK, like, you could, if you didn’t want Gunther to get involved yet in some of the bigger stories, I think you can do Gunther vs. Ilja and still be great. [48:06 onwards]