Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Rated T for Teen. My career has been a fight. A long, brutal, but necessary fight. I was told no more times than I can count. And every single time, I proved them wrong.
Chapter 2: What challenges did Gunther face in his wrestling career?
WWE 2K26 pre-order now. Hello, everybody. It's the American Nightmare, Cody Rhodes. We are at WWE's warehouse. Thank you, Ben Brown, for providing this wonderful setup. This is a WWE and Fanatics original production. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to What Do You Want to Talk About? My guest today... quite the man in the news feed.
And we just recently had his counterpart in the final match of John Cena's career on the podcast as well. One of my favorite people, a lot of your favorite wrestlers, favorite wrestler, former world heavyweight champion, intercontinental champion, all of those things. And one of my absolute favorite people, a style icon too. We might get into that here and now.
Ladies and gentlemen, the man who's making all these kids cry these days. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the podcast. Gunther!
an intro thank you for having me sometimes it's not there you know even if it's someone you really know and then you look at them and you're uh i also think the intros are becoming a problem because it's like let's just get to it you know what i'm saying like not everyone You know, it's wrestling, though.
So as we mentioned, here's, you know, the World Heavyweight Championship and the European Championship, the Intercontinental Championship. Do we call that the European Championship? The UK? It was called the NXT UK Champion, I guess. What a nice belt. It was, yeah. I liked it a lot. I don't even know. I asked them back then, like, I wanted to keep the originals. You're never going to use it again.
But they were very big on, like, no, we got to keep it in the archive. So I don't know. Maybe that's the one. Well, I mean, what's to stop you here? You come in here, do you have anything you could trade? Ben Brown's all about a trade. Oh, yeah, right? Yeah, he's all about a trade. Might be a good idea.
He also, off the books, even though this is now public in the space, off the books every now and then will slide you something from your career that I got one, for example. Oval Intercontinental Championship, if you're looking for it. Thank you for that. I've got it. But I don't have that much memorabilia yet, I have to say.
It's like I just walked around here a little bit, and I saw all those great items, and I was like, I don't know. I don't have anything. Have you ever been here before? No. Oh, my gosh. That's my first time. Well, before we talk about this wonderful place, you have something special brought to us by our friends at Wheatley American Vodka. What is that? This is a special drink. Very fitting for me.
It's called Blood, Sweat, and Causing Tears. Wow. Wow. Blood, Sweat, and Causing Tears. I'm a bit thirsty anyway. Yeah, absolutely. Cheers to you. Ba-boom. Thank you, sir. Here we go. Salty. Very nice, as it should be. That's a good one. Again, thanks to our friends at Wheatley American Vodka. I have my American Mule here, which is outstanding. Thank you to Bailey who put this together.
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Chapter 3: How did Gunther feel about retiring John Cena?
It's so different in terms of what you had. What age did you start training? I have 2005. So I think it was 17. Yeah. Yeah. And when you're 17 and you're looking at training to become a pro wrestler, did you have a goal? Did you have a thing you wanted to get to? No. And that's like, I think something that a lot of the boys from over here don't understand is like,
All of this, that's not a realistic option if you grow up as a young boy in Vienna. Okay. Because it's so far away. Yeah. And even if you think back like WWE, like when did they really open up to the outside, like to the indies and stuff like that? Sure. So now I just wanted to do it and started training and I just stuck to it. I was like, never, that's where I want to go.
That's where I want to go. Over the years, my big goal became like, hey, I want to quit working a job and just do this as a profession. That was a big goal. And that was... like all of the older boys when I started were more or less leftovers from the Ottoman's time. They barely made it somehow, like officially they made a living of it, but what living? So yeah, that was my big goal.
I was like, hey, if I can turn this into a profession, then I'm already, that would be a dream scenario. Like I never had that wide view of possibilities. So that's crazy to me, never having the wide view, but also having talked to you a bunch of different times. You're frustratingly... You say something like that? No. Wasn't sure what it would be. You're frustratingly talented. I don't know.
There are people who can just get up and do this. And there's people who require all this prep and all this training and all these voices around them, like myself. I need a Michael Hayes. I need a Paul Heyman. I need them all around me. What are we doing? And you just breeze right through.
Can I ask you just a – I don't think I've ever asked anyone this question on the podcast, but I'll just ask you – Do you think you're the best wrestler in the world? See, I don't think about that. I don't know.
No, but if you had to really look at it, if I'm just asking you, not even a contentious competitive question, just if you think looking at the entire what you know of that's out there, what's on the independent scene, what's elsewhere, and what's here, do you think you're the best wrestler in the world? At least one of. It's hard to say.
At least one of is, I mean, being in the discussion for it is... I think it's terrifying in that sense in terms of, I would tell you, you're definitely in the discussion. And I think that's exactly why you were the man in the spot against John Cena. But just the idea that you're not really thinking of it for the... You don't have the wide view. Do you think you have a wide view now?
Do you know now, taking what you've done, world champion, intercontinental champion for an absurd amount of time, just are you going to take what you've done now? What's the plan? Do you have a goal? You mentioned you get bored real quick. So not looking for a spoiler here or anything of that nature, but is there another goal, another mountain to climb? There has to be.
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Chapter 4: What is Gunther's perspective on his Austrian roots?
I always thought. So no, going to Vienna is really cool. And it's... Austria is so funny because it's a bit behind. And... there was that one reporter from the big newspaper they have there. And he was already writing about Otto. Like he worked there for 35 years or something like that. So he was all excited and he always called me up and be like, anything new? Can we do something?
And when are you coming again? And they would always write big stuff about him. It was so cool because the style it was written was still like, he would still use like old terms for certain stuff. Yeah, Vienna's, Austria's old school. It's a bit behind all the time. So my discovery, I went to Vienna. WWE did a tour and I was wrestling. I was tagging with Bob Holly.
And it was part of a big tour where I really was so naive to the rest of the world. One of the greatest gifts of my life was, WWE is sending us everywhere we could so I could learn about all these places the best I could. I could see them. I could understand a bit more.
But that what surprised me is I had been told the German crowds in Germany were going to be a little bit more subdued, a little bit harder to bring out of their shells. I don't know if you know that story. Marcel's grandma, I tried to make laugh for... like 15 minutes in a match with the Miz. Oh, it didn't work. Yeah. I don't think I got one smile, but I'd heard it was similar.
And then I remember going to Vienna and the place wasn't, they were loud. Yeah. It's a bit different. They were, they were really, really enthusiastic. I actually specifically remember Umaga and maybe cause, cause even then we were trying to figure out, is there like an auto, the big, uh, you know, the big barrel-chested type intimidating force that he was. But he had tagged in.
He was doing a match with Snitsky. He had tagged in. He was a bad guy. Crowd went nuts. So they did the right thing. Snitsky tagged himself back in. Boo. Umaga tagged himself back in. Yeah. And they just worked, and they worked. And I think they went home. They were wrestling like London and Kendrick or something and they went home.
But I just remember watching that and thinking this crowd is awesome. It's one of my absolute favorite, favorite, favorite crowds. And that building, it's always that same building, right? Yeah, they usually go there. And it is true because we are very culturally, we are very, very close to Germans. But also we have that Eastern European influence, which is already more lively.
Also you have the South, like Austria is basically like in the, it's that transitioning country from like Germany to Southern and Eastern Europe. So you catch a lot of that culture too. And that's definitely more, a little bit more passionate and stuff.
I lived in Germany for a long time and people there are more like save your money and a little bit more stingy about stuff and it's harder for them to have a good time I think while Austrians it's like you go out you have a good time that doesn't matter what you do or How much money you have available, you're still going to spend a little bit of it to go out and have a good time.
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Chapter 5: Who does Gunther want to face in WWE?
Just text Cody42 to ForThePeople. No purchase necessary. Open to legal residents of the 48 contiguous United States and DC who are 18 and older. Sweepstakes ends March 29th, 2026. This is a paid advertisement. Just wanted to point something out. Left my mind. No, it's all right.
I was going to say, speaking of just the type of wrestler you are, we always, Ben Brown always will curate a bit of the warehouse here for, of course, behind you, you don't see it, but there's John Cena's Never Give Up shoe. It just says give up. Very good. Yeah. Very accurate. It just says give up. I'm going to pay attention to the details. There's a Greco-Roman statue for your purist style.
But then over here, we put handsome Harley races, T-shirt type robe. Very nice. Kowalski. I think the dusty boots are always there. The Kowalski robe, because that's somebody that you have been compared to here. I have a Walter. Yeah. I have a fellow Walter. Walter Kowalski. Yeah. Have you had any interaction with him? No. Never? Never, no. And really, it's just big...
big tall i think the work is probably considerably different yeah in terms of uh you know what you have to do different time yeah um who's somebody you mentioned otto uh of course and you're talking about i i feel like it's gonna be a different answer it's gonna subvert my expectations on what i'm asking but was there a wrestler that you wanted to be like or are looked up to or idolized
Yeah, if I pick one out, it's Stan Hansen. Stan Hansen? Yes. Yes, okay. The man. Yeah. Absolute machine. Yeah. Unlimited gas tank, I always felt like that guy was. Well, what era of Hansen? Japan? Yeah, of course. Oh, my gosh. I only watch Hansen in Japan. So, so good. That's him. Yeah, really good. I think that's where kind of like, because he was like the disruptor, right?
Like in Japan, everybody just walks calmly to the ring and him and Brody as well. They would come, swing whatever they got and create chaos. And yeah, maybe that's where the whole inspiration came from. Like you gotta be, yeah, disrupt a little bit. The reason I asked about Hanson era, Hanson throughout Japan is unbelievable. And like you said, unlimited gas tank, just a machine. Yeah.
And in there with other machines. But there's also that era of Hanson where he's wrestling Bruno. Yeah. And an era that I don't think, like the longer hair Hanson. Yes. It's fun to see because he had that as a base, the ability to bump around and move around and do things. He had that as a base as he moves forward into his career in Japan.
One of the, just when he went into the Hall of Fame, I was very, very excited about that. Oh, me too. I remember that actually. It was really cool that they did it. But obviously it's like in the WWE picture, he's not the most known guy. Yeah. But also when they had like Inoki inducted, I was like, oh, that's so cool. Yeah. When I met Inoki, I was probably...
seven eight i'm not sure but the way i was explained to say hello to enoki and i was taught you would have thought i was meeting a foreign dignitary yeah it was a government type moment just because of the respect and and just yeah enoki's another great hall of famer funny side note actually he's the guy that brought tabasco to japan The hot sauce? Yes. Okay. Walk me through that.
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