Earlier this week, Sports Illustrated ran a report noting that WWE Intercontinental Champion GUNTHER was considered the internal favorite to win the men’s Royal Rumble match. If true, that would alter the long-expected plans of a WWE WrestleMania 40 Night One main event between WWE World Heavyweight Champion Seth “Freaking” Rollins and CM Punk. Shortly after the publication of the article, Justin Barrasso, who wrote the report, issued a statement conceding he had been fed bad intel by a previously reliable source.
At the 2024 WWE Royal Rumble media junket, I asked GUNTHER about the recent Sports Illustrated article and what he thought about it.
“Yeah, I think it’s a very realistic scenario,” he began. “I think that’s why I belong, and I made my intentions clear as well on Raw, so we’ll see what happens.”
I pressed the WWE Intercontinental Champion on how he felt about being elevated out of the mid-card title picture into the World Championship one.
“It feels very good,” he flatly stated. “I don’t really think about it too much, to be honest, because I guess we all are, but in my case, you are always kind of like in the tunnel a little bit and focused on the next step. So sometimes you don’t really step out and actually look at it from a bird’s eye perspective. So, yeah, I’m not gonna get lost in, like, feeling excited or overwhelmed about anything. I’m very focused. And that’s what I’m gonna keep doing.”
Our full 2024 WWE Royal Rumble interview with WWE Intercontinental Champion GUNTHER will be released soon.
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