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Gunther wanted to give Goldberg one of the best matches of his career

Posted: Apr 15th 2026 By: Shounak Chakribarti

Gunther wanted to give Goldberg one of the best matches of his career.

Earlier last year at Saturday Night’s Main Event, Hall of Famer Goldberg faced off against Gunther in his WWE retirement match. Recently speaking on WWE Retrospective, Gunther reflected on that moment and his thoughts about giving the veteran his career’s best match.

“When I came up in wrestling and watched Goldberg matches, the most exciting part was always that something catastrophic could happen at any time. I think that was kind of the appeal too, it looked dangerous because it was. I remember Hunter asked me about it almost like a year before, where it’s ‘do you want to do that?’ Yeah, I want to wrestle Bill Goldberg, and I want to have the best match he maybe ever had.

“In that situation the only thing I can do is just give it my best and make sure it’s the best match possible. I mean on the one hand it was also kind of like a surreal moment because wrestling Goldberg was never my agenda or anything, it’s like sure I’ll wrestle Goldberg if it happens, I used to play that guy on the N64 with my friends. It’s funny to catch yourself in a situation like that,” Gunther continued.

Speaking highly of the feud and their match’s setup, the former champion commented, “He was doing so many things intentionally right that impressed me and I was like ‘that’s really cool’. I also liked the setting of it because we were early at bringing back Saturday Night’s Main Event again, the old school setting and stuff, that was really fitting.“

“At the end of the day it’s all about big characters, that’s the thing, everyone knows Goldberg. When we got to the place where it was time for him to hit his signature things, in that building, everyone was for Bill Goldberg, they wanted to see Goldberg win that night,” he further added.

Believing that retiring Goldberg helped him in his career, Gunther continued, “I think that match did a lot for me and my career, and I hope he can look back at it and be happy with the performance he put on that night, because I was very happy with that match and it definitely exceeded expectations I would say.“

Later that year, he would go onto face John Cena in December 2025 and retire him as well before facing AJ Styles at Royal Rumble 2026 and retiring him too.