If you happened to catch this week’s NXT 2.0, you may have been one of the many, many people reacting in anger and confusion to Walter’s new name change. Announced by the Austrian himself following his match with Roderick Strong, he is now going by the title of Gunther. Yep, I don’t understand it either. Rumors began circulating that WWE would be changing Walter’s name after they filed a trademark for the name “Gunther Stark”. A quick Google search quickly brought up that the name “Gunther Stark” actually belonged to a historical figure with ties to the Nazi regime in WWII. But putting that administrative blunder to one side, should we really be surprised by this name change at all?
WWE has always wanted to control their own narrative by essentially acting like they are the only wrestling game in town. One of the ways they do this is when they bring in a new talent they basically do not acknowledge any of their former accolades if they occurred outside of the WWE bubble. An exception to this used to be in NXT, when they would occasionally reveal outside accolades to hype up a new signing before eventually ignoring that history. This at least made some sense. But now that NXT is essentially the main roster lite, the norm is to now ignore what was previously set out to shape talent into “WWE homegrown superstars”. If this was a brand new signing you couldn’t really complain too much, but what made this baffling is they have done it to an already cemented star.
Even if you didn’t watch independent wrestling back in the 2010’s, chances are you had heard of Walter and the buzz surrounding him. When he showed up in NXT UK in 2019, the man was made right from the beginning because of that rep. In a space of a few months he captured the NXT UK United Kingdom Championship and established himself as that brand's figurehead. He became one of the top reasons to tune into that show every week because the man does not have a bad match under his belt. This was evident when he would make the odd trip to the main brand NXT, constantly having show stealing bouts at Takeovers with the likes of Pete Dunne, Tommaso Ciampa and Ilja Dragunov. His bout with Dragunov in 2020 was such an instant classic that main brand WWE could not even ignore it, posting videos of main roster talent watching and praising the fight. After grafting so hard for those 3 years, with Walter bringing such recognition to himself, why would WWE suddenly decide to take that away?
What makes this change even more baffling is the way it has been implemented. Walter’s arrival to NXT 2.0 has been teased and hyped for weeks. NXT UK gave him a good send off as he battled their hottest uprising talent Nathan Fraizer (another talent that was victim to a name change). They also released a compilation on YouTue of his top 10 moments while part of the NXT UK brand. The various different social media platforms have been doing their job announcing his arrival. Hell, during his match with Strong the commentary team called him Walter throughout the match. It was only following the win he quickly grabbed the microphone and announced his new name. Pretty hastily and with a slight taste of resentment I might add. If you are going to commit to renaming a talent Vince then just do it. Don’t just have the talent quickly go - “Oh yeah, my name is this now. Cool. Bye.”
I’m sure we will find out more in the coming days and weeks, but if I was willing to bet on it, I would wager it comes down to Walter not wanting to sell his name away to WWE. I could be completely wrong about that but this has been proven to be the case before. Unless you are a megastar like a Hulk Hogan or a Stone Cold Steve Austin, WWE usually controls the names and gimmicks of the superstars who worked for them with an iron grip. When Walter came into the WWE bubble he seemed to have a lot of control over himself. There have been many stories printed that Vince and Co have wanted to bring him over to America for a long time but Walter had been refusing this because he was happy remaining in Europe due to his family life. Due to recent changes in his personal life Walter has now seemingly relocated to America so it stands to reason maybe he doesn’t have such control over himself anymore. I won’t bring up his personal stuff here but a quick Google search will fill you in.
Of course, all this could just essentially boil down to Vince thinking Walter needed a name change. As this article says, we really shouldn’t be too surprised that they changed his name. This trend has been more common place as of late, with name changes occurring to a plethora of wrestlers over the last few years. Remember when the hot as hell tag team War Machine arrived in NXT before they were renamed the War Raiders? Then when they were brought to the main roster they were rebranded as the Viking Experience before having the name changed a week later to the Viking Raiders? The popular tactic in WWE at the moment is to just cut a wrestler's name in half. With the likes of Mustapha Ali, Matt Riddle and Otis Dozovic all having their names reduced to simply Ali, Riddle and Otis respectively. In the case of Walter they couldn’t just shorten it to “Wal” so I guess they just changed it completely to another name of Germanic origins.
With the name changed, the outcome will always be the same. Some fans will still forever call him Walter in defiance, whereas the rest will just get on-board. You never know, maybe WWE will pay attention to the backlash and next week he will be back to Walter… But let's not get our hopes up. What is important here is how will Walter/Gunther fare now he is firmly in the hands of Vince McMahon. If they book Walter/Gunther like how he has been up to this point then the name change can be forgiven. But if this change is a bad omen of what is to come, then we should be worried. The rare occasions McMahon has been in control of Walter has not gone well. Remember his appearance at Survivor Series in 2019? Yeah… Time will tell what will happen with the Ring General but please WWE, don’t ruin this amazing talent.
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