Backstage News On Gunther SmackDown Debut – WWE called up Gunther, formerly known as WALTER, to the main roster alongside Ludwig Kaiser, formerly known as Marcel Barthel, on Friday’s WWE SmackDown where the former NXT UK Champion beat Joe Alonzo, a local wrestler, in a squash match.
Dave Meltzer talked about Gunther’s main roster debut on today’s Wrestling Observer Radio and noted that WWE asked him to lose weight because Vince McMahon wants slim wrestlers on television. Meltzer noted that the original plan was for Gunther to be a singles star on the main roster.
“It’s interesting that they’re going with them as a tag team and not Gunther as a single, which surprises me greatly. Especially because the original plan was separate brands. And then, the other one is if they were going to do the tag team they kind of like aced out Eichner. I think that Barthel and Eichner are the better idea of the team…Yes, it probably is a size thing. Maybe an idea that they don’t have faith in Gunther as a singles guy yet… I think that, you know, he can be a top singles guy, although I think the loss of weight hurts him a lot. I know he was told and he listened unlike other people who thought that being big was really good and were told and didn’t listen and now is somewhere else, which is Keith Lee, I’m not beating around the bush on that.
Vince wants slim people on TV. I could see from the Vince perspective, telling the guy, ‘Hey, drop 30 pounds,’ right? I thought what made him special was the idea that he’s a 290-310 pound guy who can fly around and can move and hits really hard and looks like a powerhouse and now he’s just a 6’3” guy.”
Gunther was booked to lose to NXT Champion Bron Breakker in the main event of Tuesday’s NXT 2.0 show. WWE kept Fabian Aichner in NXT instead of bringing him up to the main roster with his fellow Imperium members.
