Gunther’s Intensity Forced WWE Star To “Up His Game”
According to a former rival, Gunther’s offence looks like it hurts, because it really does.
Throughout August and September, Chad Gable went to war with Gunther over the Intercontinental Title. The tag team star pushed the champion to the limit on more than one occasion, showing that didn’t gain his reputation as one of WWE’s most underappreciated wrestlers by accident.
Gunther is known as one of the most hard-hitting stars on the entire roster, with his chops in particular becoming the stuff of legend. Fans often comment on how much it looks like a number of his moves really hurt, so it’s perhaps not a surprise that this is because they really do.
Speaking on WWE Die Woche, Gable was asked how it feels to face the Austrian star, and unsurprisingly he recalled the physical damage the matches did.
“Oof, I wish I could show you my chest after some of those matches, and you could see how it feels. But it’s definitely some of the most intense, hard-hitting matches I’ve had in my entire career. So you get what you see on TV with him. It’s not a joke. You can see the chops, they look like they hurt. They hurt. They sound like they hurt, they hurt. He hits hard. Nothing is wasted with him. Everything he does, whether it’s a boot, a punch, a chop, everything matters, and it hurts, and it’s stiff, and it’s laid in there. It’s intense, and that draws that out of me as well. So it makes me fight back intensely as well, which I like. It’s very competitive, being in there with him. It forces me to up my game, if that makes sense, to raise my level a little more, which is necessary when you’re in with a guy like that for championship matches, so I love those matches.”
Gunther’s Intercontinental Title Reign Runs On
Gunther is the longest-reigning Intercontinental Champion of all-time with his run currently standing at 493 days and counting. The star made the most recent defence of the gold on the October 2nd episode of Raw where he defeated Tommaso Ciampa.
After the match, Imperium attacked Ciampa which led to the return of Johnny Gargano.
H/t to Fightful