GUNTHER Breaks Record As WWE Intercontinental Champion
It is now official: GUNTHER will now surpass The Honky Tonk Man’s record for longest-reigning Intercontinental Champion in WWE history.
In one of the most exciting main-event titles matches in RAW history, the man formerly known as WALTER retained his title against a brave and valiant Chad Gable.
The title match was saved for the main-event slot and was built to all throughout the show. Several vignettes and segments were dedicated to building this match and WWE even showed highlight packages of previous Intercontinental Champions.
Gable was confident that his will to win would surpass GUNTHERs desire to retain his title. However, Gable couldn’t get the job done despite an incredible effort.
Gable seemed to have control over the match at first as he picked apart the champion’s leg to setup an ankle lock. And despite taking several punishing chops to the chest, Gable kept pushing forward and goaded GUNTHER into charging at him.
Eventually, Gable came incredibly close to beating the champion as he got a very close two-count off a Chaos Theory German suplex and soon afterwards kept his ankle lock applied despite the champion’s best efforts at escaping and knocking his challenger away.
Unfortunately for Gable, the champion still had one good leg left and used that to kick him away. GUNTHER was able to escape another near-three-count when Gable tried the Bret/Piper sleeper counter spot and the hit a Kobashi-style sleeper suplex, a powerbomb, and a lariat, all in quick succession to get the three-count to retain his title.
GUNTHER makes history with longest-ever IC title reign
GUNTHER won the Intercontinental Championship on June 10, 2022 and has defended it successfully fifteen times since then. Several of these title matches, including his singles bout against Sheamus at Clash at the Castle and the Triple Threat match at WrestleMania 39 Night Two, have been hailed by WWE fans as some of the best matches in modern times.
The champion has also retained his title against the likes of Braun Strowman, Shinsuke Nakamura, Ricochet, and Matt Riddle.
Although as of this writing GUNTHER is still only at the 450-day mark as champion and Honky Tonk Man’s reign was 454 days, GUNTHER doesn’t have any scheduled title defenses between now and September 8th. This is why WWE’s commentators officially recognized his record-breaking reign as official as of the September 4th episode of RAW.