Gunther has revealed that retiring AJ Styles carried more personal weight for him than ending John Cena’s career.
Speaking on WWE Retrospective, Gunther looked back on the Royal Rumble match that forced Styles to pass out and hang up his boots, following his tapping out of Cena one month earlier at Saturday Night’s Main Event in December 2025.
“Obviously, after I retired Cena, my mojo was through the roof. 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. AJ is different because you had Goldberg, a WCW legend, and John Cena, the guy that stands for WWE. Then, you have AJ, who is somewhat more similar to me when it comes to his career because he had a great run here, but a lot of the stuff people love him for happened before WWE. He is one of those guys where the generation that I came up with, we looked up to guys like AJ Styles. When he was in New Japan, we always watched his big matches there and they were fantastic. I always had so much respect for AJ’s work. It almost felt, from the wrestler purist heart, it felt more important to me than the Cena match,” Gunther said.
Gunther’s “Career Killer” run has now seen him end the careers of Goldberg, John Cena, and AJ Styles. He faces Seth Rollins at WrestleMania 42 night one on April 18 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit WWE Retrospective with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
