Gunther has explained why retiring AJ Styles was different from John Cena or Goldberg.
In the past year, Gunther has ended the legendary careers of John Cena, Goldberg, and AJ Styles. While Cena is unarguably the biggest of the three stars, for Gunther, there was something different when it came to Styles.
Speaking on WWE Retrospective, The Ring General explained that he wanted to be the one to have Styles’ last match since his retirement became an open secret backstage.
“Everybody kind of knew backstage, it was an open secret that AJ was going to hang up his boots at some point, that’s what I wanted to do next.”
He explained that he and Styles had similar paths in the pro wrestling business. While Cena was synonymous with WWE and Goldberg with WCW, Styles was a global star with memorable runs in multiple promotions over the course of his career.
“AJ’s kind of different where it’s like; you have the WCW legend Goldberg, then you have the guy that stands for WWE, then you have AJ who’s somewhat more similar to me because he had a great run here but a lot of the stuff the people love him for happened before WWE.
“He’s one of those guys that, the generation of wrestling I came up with, we looked up to guys like AJ Styles. I remember that when he was in New Japan and we always watched his big matches there, they were fantastic. There was the time where I was really grinding and developing, there was stuff I would watch.”
Gunther also respected The Phenomenal One’s work in the ring, so from a “wrestler purist” perspective, he was the more important person to retire.
“I always had so much respect for AJ’s work. It almost kind of felt like, 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 and ruin that last run he has was so much fun.”
‘AJ Styles Went Out On His Own Terms’ – Gunther
Another reason Gunther preferred the match with Styles was that his retirement had not been announced as a certainty in advance, whereas his bouts with Cena and Goldberg were widely known to be the end of their respective careers.
“That’s the beauty of it because with Goldberg and Cena everyone knew it was their last match, and I think with AJ people weren’t too sure it was going to be his last match. A good chunk of them expected AJ to win and carry on with his career, but he went out on his own terms, that’s something a lot of wrestlers can’t manage, it’s always best to go at a point where people are still going to miss you, not at a point where people are like ‘ah it was time’.’
“So, hat off to AJ, great career, fantastic wrestler, but I took it away, what can I do.”
During the same interview, Gunther gave his thoughts on Goldberg’s retirement match, saying he wanted to give the Hall of Famer the best match of his career.
H/T to F4WOnline for the above transcription.
