GUNTHER has won the 2024 King of the Ring tournament.

The Austrian tank, the winner of the Raw side of the bracket, toppled SmackDown’s Randy Orton in the 22-minute final, securing the career-defining victory via pinfall. With this win, the record-breaking Intercontinental Champion now moves towards SummerSlam on Saturday, August 3 with an opportunity at the World Heavyweight Championship, a prize added to both the King and Queen of the Ring tournaments by WWE Chief Content Officer Paul Levesque in the days before the event.

GUNTHER’s road to the finals saw him submit Sheamus in a 21-minute repeat of their Clash At The Castle 2022 epic before, the following week, he submitted Kofi Kingston, who was a last-minute substitute for his New Day comrade Xavier Woods, the 2021 King. Finally, he pinned Jey Uso in his semifinal contest.

Randy Orton, meanwhile, began his road to the King of the Ring finals when he defeated AJ Styles, six days removed from Styles’ five-star Undisputed WWE Championship classic vs. Cody Rhodes. In subsequent weeks, ‘The Apex Predator’ saw off Carmelo Hayes and Tama Tonga to secure his spot opposite GUNTHER in Saudi Arabia.

What’s Next For GUNTHER?

With the King of the Ring crown sitting atop his head, GUNTHER now advances to SummerSlam with a World Championship opportunity awaiting him and, although his current placement on the Raw brand may indicate he’ll challenge for the World Heavyweight Championship, a title clash with Cody Rhodes better fits the collective palate of the WWE Universe’s tastes.

‘The American Nightmare’ addressed the possibility of a match with GUNTHER during a media appearance, believing that he is “destined” to one day collide with the behemoth:

“So I’ll go ahead and say that GUNTHER is just out in the ether. And I do think that he and I are probably destined to clash at some point. That’s something I really look forward to because here, here’s why this is maybe a little inside baseball; GUNTHER is somebody that really is popular with the most hardcore wrestling fans, and there are definitely a bazillion different pockets of fandom. For the hardcore fans who are always with it, ups and downs, ebbs and flows.

I always like casting myself against individuals like that because I don’t want people to ever think in this, ‘Oh, he’s the champion. Oh, he’s been. He’s becoming the face of the brand. Oh, it’s the song and it’s the entrance and it’s the pyro’. I don’t want them to forget that I actually love wrestling. I love slugging it out. I really do. And he’s somebody, just in the brief time we touched in the Royal Rumble, that I got a sense this could be a major opponent for me at at some point down the road.”

Cody Rhodes and GUNTHER collided in both the 2023 and 2024 Royal Rumble matches, with Rhodes eliminating the former WALTER in both bouts.

H/T to WrestlingNews.co.