Last year in Dec. 2025, Gunther defeated and retired John Cena; he then followed it up by retiring AJ Styles in Jan. 2026. Gunther continued his dominant streak by wrestling Seth Rollins at WWE WrestleMania 42. Before all of this, he retired Goldberg in early 2026.

However, as of now, Gunther has been unable to win a lot of his recent matches and has found himself in a feud with Danhausen on Friday Night SmackDown. During his recent appearance on Busted Open while promoting his upcoming Apple TV movie, Matchbox, Cena was asked if WWE was wasting Gunther.

“I know there's sentiment out there that like, ‘Man, they're wasting Gunther!' Maybe currently they are. But I don't see the view from the penthouse. I'm not in those meetings where they're just looking at the whiteboard, connecting the dots. Maybe they're just cooling him off. Maybe they're putting him away from TV. I don't know,” Cena said.

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The 17-time World Champion explained that his role was to make Gunther look strong in his final match. “What I am gonna do is I'm not gonna challenge the opinion of, ‘Aye, I'm not gonna give this for this guy and you're gonna forget him.' This is the work that I need to do for today, and we're gonna make him look the best we can, and I'm gonna give him as much steam as I can, and what you do with it afterwards, that ain't my call,” he finished.

WWE has recently used names like CM Punk, Sami Zayn, and Roman Reigns in the world title positions, which has resulted in a halt in Gunther's push.