Since winning the WWE Intercontinental Championship back in June 2022, Gunther has undoubtedly become the belt’s most memorable holder in recent memory. Last September, the Austrian star surpassed 455 days as champion and in doing so, broke the all-time record for the longest reign with the title in history, previously held by The Honky Tonk Man. Now, Gunther has surpassed yet another big milestone in his dominant reign.
As of today, January 31st 2024, Gunther has reached 600 days as Intercontinental Champion. While that achievement is impressive in itself, it also means his reign is now just a few months away from becoming one of the longest of any championship in WWE history. Should he hold the belt until April 26th later this year, 86 days from today, he will become the tenth-longest reigning champion ever in WWE by surpassing Pete Dunne’s 685-day reign as NXT United Kingdom Champion.
In doing so, Gunther would also become only the second person in history to have two separate championship reigns enter the top ten longest in the company’s history. His record-breaking 870-day reign as NXT United Kingdom Champion already features in that prestigious list, sitting at the ninth-longest in history. The only other star to achieve this is Bruno Sammartino whose 1,237-day and 2,803-day reigns as WWWF World Heavyweight Champion sit at number six and number two on that list respectively.
Outside of his dominant title reign, Gunther is approaching two years of being undefeated in singles action. His last singles loss came at the hands of Bron Breakker back on the April 5th 2022 edition of NXT in what became Gunther’s final match on the black and gold brand before debuting on the main roster on the following edition of SmackDown. Just two months later, he went on to dethrone then-Intercontinental Champion Ricochet to begin his historic ongoing reign.