Gunther says Roman Reigns is not a dream WWE opponent (Exclusive)
Roman Reigns is not on Gunther's list of dream first-time-ever match-ups in WWE.
At the time of writing, Gunther has held the Intercontinental Championship for 409 days. His title reign is the second-longest in WWE right now, behind Reigns, whose tenure as Universal Champion is currently at 1,058 days.
In an exclusive interview with Sportskeeda Wrestling's Riju Dasgupta, Gunther praised Reigns' performances as a WWE Superstar. The Ring General also admitted he does not view The Tribal Chief as someone he must face in his career:
"I wouldn't consider Roman as a dream opponent," Gunther said. "I think we are two completely different wrestlers. He's obviously somebody that came up through first of all his family history, but then he got basically developed or trained in the WWE system and got brought up through that." [9:27 – 9:53]
Watch the video above to hear Gunther's thoughts on possibly working with Roman Reigns' special counsel Paul Heyman on-screen at some stage.
Gunther on Roman Reigns' unique appeal
Although Roman Reigns has been one of WWE's most prominent superstars for the last decade, Gunther did not follow the product closely for many years. Instead, the Austrian preferred to take inspiration from European and Japanese wrestling.
The Imperium leader still appreciates how much progress Reigns made after coming through the ranks of WWE's developmental system:
"I think he's a picture-perfect example of how WWE can take someone and turn them into an absolute superstar," Gunther continued. "I come from a different way. I'm from Europe. We always kinda had to build it up for ourselves. I was way more interested in Japanese wrestling, for example, than in WWE coming up as a professional wrestler, so the idols I had, or the people I watched and admired, were different people than him." [9:53 – 10:28]
Gunther added that nobody else in the wrestling business receives crowd reactions quite like The Head of the Table:
"What he has achieved is absolutely incredible, and I think in general the aura he has and the reaction he gets as soon as he steps foot in an arena is almost like never seen before, so that makes it very interesting for me to, at some point, if the chance arises, just to see who would come out of this as the winner." [10:30 – 10:58]
Gunther and Reigns competed in the five-on-five-on-five elimination match between RAW, SmackDown, and NXT at Survivor Series 2019. Since then, they have not crossed paths on WWE television.
Would you like to see Gunther vs. Roman Reigns? Let us know in the comments section below.
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