With rumors going around about how Gunther declined a Crown Jewel booking out of concerns about the safety of traveling to and performing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the former WWE World champion was given a dark match after Raw last night (Nov. 9) at Greenville, South Carolina’s Bon Secours Wellness Arena.
The outcome of that match is generating conversation, as Trick Williams pinned Gunther clean. The Ring General got in plenty of offense in the brief match, and kicked out of several Williams’ covers.
But it wasn’t a terribly long match, and Gunther does stay down after a basic execution of Trick’s regular finishing sequence.
Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez discussed Gunther’s pinfall loss on Wrestling Observer Radio after Monday’s Raw, with Meltzer saying:
“Gunther lost to Trick Williams tonight. Spin kick, Book End, one, two, three. But it’s possible this is all coincidental. Because in a dark match, the babyface does go over. That’s the rule. Usually with a guy at the level of Gunther, they’ll do a run in and DQ, because they protect the top guys in these type of matches. So there’s probably something to this.”
And Alvarez adding:
“Well, to the best of my knowledge, Gunther has never, until tonight, lost a dark match, a singles dark match, by anything other than DQ. And he has only lost one house show in his entire career on the main roster. So I would say that one way or the other, this is unusual, that he would lose his dark match clean to Trick Williams.”
Was this “unusual” outcome punishment for turning down the Crown Jewel match against Finn Balor (who also allegedly wasn’t keen to fly into a city in the middle of the Saudis fight with Houthi forces in neighboring Yemen, but wasn’t as opposed as Gunther)? If so, will this be the extent of it or is he looking at a few months of similar messages? And how will this factor into larger concerns about WWE’s presentation of Gunther this year?
Let us know what you think below. Me? I wouldn’t punish a non-soldier for opting out of flying into an active war zone, but I don’t doubt that wrestling culture calls for some kind of “punishment”, or that WWE would carry some out.
