Ask 411 Wrestling: How Many Wrestlers Has Gunther Retired?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals.

Through Hel Stryer and brimstone . . . it’s Ask 411 Wrestling!

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

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Joel is putting another notch in his belt:

Gunther has officially become known as the “Career Killer” after retiring Bill Goldberg, John Cena, and AJ Styles. Could any other wrestlers be unofficially added to this list? Were there any other matches where Gunther/WALTER defeated an opponent in their final match?

The answer is yes, though each name added comes with a few asterisks.

The first is Pat McAfee. His last career match was against Gunther at the 2025 Backlash pay per view in St. Louis, Missouri. That said, this feels more like a part-timer being on hiatus than the end of somebody’s career. However, if McAfee ever decides he is no longer going to wrestle, you could retroactively add him to a list of the Ring General’s conquests.

Up next? Shanky. Yes, Shanky. The Indian superstar’s final WWE match was on September 8, 2023 in Hyderabad, India at the Superstar Spectacular show. The bout was a loss to Gunther, who was defending the Intercontinental Championship at the time. Technically, Shanky has had two more documented indy matches after this, but this was the end of his career as far as the the WWE canon is concerned.

The final addition to the list perhaps gets a bit too “real,” but it does technically answer the question. It’s German wrestler Karsten Beck. Beck was very popular in European indy group wXw, where Gunther/Walter first rose to prominence. On July 2, 2016, Beck and Walter met in Bremen, Germany. Beck actually won the match, but it was by disqualification, so Walter still wound up getting the upper hand.

This proved to be Beck’s last appearance as an in-ring competitor, but it was for rather sad reasons. He was diagnosed with brain cancer and had to retire from in-ring competition, though he did remain involved in wXw as an authority figure character. He battled his cancer for several years, but ultimately he succumbed to it and passed away on October 15, 2020.

A Different Ryan doesn’t even work here:

Was the whole Battle Dome invasion angle in WCW in late 2000 supposed to have gone somewhere?  If you don’t know/forgot, Battle Dome was that American Gladiators rip-off that aired from 1999-2001.

To provide a bit more backstory, BattleDome was a television show that produced two seasons to air in first-run syndication between 1999 and 2001. Ryan is correct when he says it basically aped the format of American Gladiators, though its version of the Gladiators – called “BattleDome Warriors” – each had their own separate pro wrestling style gimmick and entrance.

In October and November 2000, WCW wrestlers Rick Steiner, Diamond Dallas Page, Buff Bagwell, and Ernest “The Cat” Miller made appearances on BattleDome, attacking BattleDome Warriors during their games. The Warriors responded in kind, showing up on WCW programming for some pull-apart brawls.

Then, the whole thing just ended one day, without anything that felt like a blowoff on either program.

According to issues of the Figure Four Weekly newsletter published while the angle was ongoing, the crossover between the two sides was put together by Eric Bischoff, who by that point was involved in television production outside of wrestling. The idea was the drive up the ratings for both shows during the fall sweeps season, which no longer exists but used to be a time of year when advertisers would pay particular attention to TV ratings for the purpose of setting the rates they would pay for commercials. Virtually every TV show, big or small, pulled out all the stops during this time of year. Pretty much everybody acknowledged that this crossover was going to benefit BattleDome far more than it did WCW, because it was WCW that had an established fanbase. However, folks were surprised by how well the “invasion” segments got over on WCW television, at least in terms of live crowd reaction, because they did feel fairly organic.

There were plans to continue the story longer than it ultimately went on, but F4W reports that there was a dispute over travel that killed it, as the folks producing BattleDome felt WCW should pay to transport the Warriors to and from WCW shows, since it involved traversing the country whereas BattleDome would’ve just taped for a few weeks in a fixed studio location. WCW was hemorrhaging money by this point, though, and they didn’t want to pick up the extra trans. Because the whole thing was only ever meant to benefit sweeps ratings and because sweeps had ended, nobody made it a high priority to work through the disagreement.

And that’s it as far as the WCW/BattleDome angle goes. I did want to throw out a few extra pieces of BattleDome trivia, though, particularly as it relates to pro wrestling.

First off, one of the BattleDome Warriors, called “T-Money” on the show, was played by none other than former NFL linebacker Terry Crews. Of course, Crews has gone on to have a very successful acting career, most notably in sitcoms like Everybody Hates Chris and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. If you want to see footage of him wrestling Rick Steiner, you most certainly can, which is not something you can say for most sitcom stars.

There were also several other BattleDomers who had ties to professional wrestling.

Bodybuilder Michael O’Hearn played a BattleDome Warrior named Michael O’Dell, who was the resident pretty boy character. At the time of the WCW/BattleDome crossover, his wife was Melinda O’Hearn (nee McCullum), a.k.a. Midajah, the valet of Scott Steiner. After WCW went off the air and BattleDome was canceled, O’Hearn did train to be a wrestler for a period of time with California’s All Pro Wrestling group, though not much ever came of it. He focused on acting instead, and he eventually went from BattleDome Warrior to American Gladiator when he adopted the name “Titan” and worked on the 2008 reboot of Gladiators that was hosted by Hulk Hogan.

A BattleDome Warrior named Snake was added in the show’s second season, after the WCW angle concluded. Snake was portrayed by Justice Smith, who after BattleDome in the early 2000s also trained to be a wrestler at Rick Bassman’s UPW, which also produced names like John Cena and Nathan Jones. In 2005, Smith participated in the fourth iteration of WWE Tough Enough, the same competition that was won by Daniel Puder and featured Mike the Miz. Smith only ever had one reported pro wrestling match, which occurred in 2006 on a show promoted by Afa the Wild Samoan’s WXW indy group. Like O’Hearn, Smith also went on to feature in the 2008 American Gladiators reboot as the Gladiator named “Justice.”

The 6’7” Stefan Gamlin was at one time a WWF prospect who was sent to Ohio Valley Wrestling to learn his craft, wrestling there from the fall of 1999 through early 2000. He was also a BattleDome Warrior under the name of Mad Dog Steele. After neither wrestling nor BattleDoming worked out for him, he tried out legitimate combat sports. He was an early opponent of Bob Sapp and overall had three MMA bouts and one kickboxing match, losing all four of them with the three MMA losses all being by submission. He was also once scheduled to fight Butterbean, but that bout was canceled before it could happen.

Finally, though BattleDome almost exclusively focused on male competitors, they did have a couple of special episodes that saw women participate. The first ever women’s BattleDome competition was won by Caryn Mower. Mower was a stunt woman who got into wrestling through the aforementioned UPW in 1999 where she wrestled under the name Carnidge. Eventually, the WWF picked her up and gave her the gimmick of Muffy, the personal trainer to Stephanie McMahon. However, she only got on television for two weeks before getting cut. She went back to stunt work afterwards. Believe it or not, she has a credit in the 2025 SpongeBob Movie.

Tyler from Winnipeg has been watching Cobra Kai:

Who are the top three wrestlers who did Side Russian Leg Sweeps?

First, let me just say what a phenomenally dumb move the Side Russian Leg Sweep is if you stop to think about it, as you’ve got two wrestlers taking the exact same back bump, but we’re supposed to believe that the guy performing the move is somehow unhurt whereas the guy taking the move has been damaged.

Then again, we now live in a world where the Canadian Destroyer is commonplace, so maybe I should back off the SRLS for a minute.

I’m going to declare a tie for third place between Raven and the Sandman for their “hardcore” variations on the Russian Leg Sweep, with Sandman having his kendo stick-assisted “White Russian Leg Sweep” and Raven performing a version of the move into the ringside barricade, which frankly looked like it should have given him a concussion on several occasions.

Coming in at number two is Bret “The Hitman” Hart, a very proficient Russian Leg Sweeper who worked the maneuver into his infamous “Five Moves of Doom.”

Topping the list is none other than the “Candyman” Brad Armstrong who executed the move nicely from just about any position but did it particularly well as a reversal to a vertical suplex. He also did an EXCELLENT float over from the Leg Sweep into a lateral press to get the three count on his opponent.

We’re checking up with Doc:

I caught a brief mention on The Stevie Richards Show of an NDA and lawsuit regarding him and radio hosts Opie and Anthony and he mentioned WBCN Radio in Boston and their River Rave concert. I’m a huge wrestling fan and radio geek and I had never heard anything about this. My girlfriend at the time went to the show (I think 2000?) and told me how Stevie made an appearance on stage, cutting a heel promo in between bands. He might have interrupted Green Day’s set, trying to censor them.

Apparently, Stevie can’t talk about the incident, but has anyone else mentioned it? A web search shows a YouTube clip of Stevie choking Opie in some kind of backstage area, but it seemed like a total work and I couldn’t imagine that Opie was actually injured.

<bIf O and A sued Stevie or WWF, it doesn’t make a lot of sense that the relationship would be in the kind of shape to see Vince hire the guys to do XFL pre-game stuff soon after, unless I misremember the timeline.

Though I did not find anything that directly addresses this, the circumstantial evidence I’ve put together leads me to the conclusion that Stevie is just kayfabing his audience.

Civil lawsuits are generally going to be public record. Searching around under the real names of both Stevie Richards (Michael Manna) and Opie (Gregg Hughes) doesn’t turn up any record of legal proceedings between the two of them.

Conceivably, there could have been a threat of suit and matters could have been settled before a complaint was filed, but I don’t know if that was even really the case.

First off, I was able to find the YouTube clip that Doc referenced in his question, and it seems like the confrontation was a pretty obvious work. Plus, the clip was uploaded to Opie’s own YouTube channel nine years ago (i.e. in 2017), and it seems unlikely that he would be resharing it if it were the source of legitimate ill will – at least without alluding to the ill will in some way.

Plus, on the Al Snow fansite Al Snow’s Head, which was founded by Bryan Alvarez’s Uncle Wayne, there is a recap of Al Snow and Tazz appearing on Opie and Anthony in June 2001, and a reference is made to the Stevie/Opie incident in a joking fashion – not in the way that you would expect if there were genuine legal issues involved.

I think all this points to Richards having a bit of fun with his audience.

Shaun is going for the trifecta:

Which wrestlers have held three or more titles simultaneously?

These days, I’m sure there are tons of them, because there are so many fly by night indy promotions that will hand belts over to anybody who has even the slightest bit of a name.

I don’t consider that much of an accomplishment, though, so I’m going to focus on situations in which wrestlers simultaneously held three or more titles from significant promotions. (Sorry, Mercedes.)

The first name that came to my mind upon reading this question was Lance Storm, who as part of his big push in WCW in the year 2000 captured the company’s United States Championship, Cruiserweight Championship, and Hardcore Championship, all of which he rechristened with Canadian-themed names.

Kurt Angle had a similar accomplishment. While part of the TNA roster in 2007, he won that promotion’s World Title. Around the same time, he won a version of the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, though it wasn’t the legitimate IWGP Title promoted by New Japan Pro Wrestling. It was instead an offshoot recognized as a championship by Antonio Inoki’s promotion, the Inoki Genome Federation. Angle’s rival at the time, Samoa Joe, won the TNA X Division Championship and the TNA Tag Team Championship (yeah, as a singles wrestler – these were the Russo days). The two men then met at the 2007 Hard Justice pay per view with all of those championships on the line. Angle won, meaning he held four championships simultaneously.

This next one is a little bit iffy. In 2010, Mike the Miz was the WWE United States Champion when he and the Big Show defeated Triple H and Shawn Michaels to win the WWE Unified Tag Team Championship, which was the product of an earlier unification of the WWE Tag Team Championship and the World Tag Team Championship. I’ve seen some sources refer to Mike as holding three titles simultaneously here, though I think you could just as credibly argue that he was only a double champion, because the two sets of tag titles were unified into one championship at the time, even though they continued to be represented by two sets of physical belts.

In 2016, Bobby Lashley went on a three-championship run in TNA, simultaneously holding the company’s World, X Division, and King of the Mountain Titles.

Kenny Omega simultaneously held the world championships of three different promotions in 2021, those being the AAA Mega Championship, the AEW World Championship, and the TNA World Championship.

Then, of course, somebody will yell at me if I don’t mention the J-Crown.

This was the product of a tournament in Japan held between August 3 and August 5, 1996. The entrants were eight wrestlers who all held championships for lighter weight classes in various promotions, with the tournament being a “winner take all” situation. The belts involved were the IWPG Junior Heavyweight Championship (from New Japan), the British Commonwealth Junior Heavyweight Championship (originally a UK title that came under the control of Michinoku Pro Wrestling), the NWA World Junior Heavyweight Title (from the NWA), the NWA World Welterweight Championship (really a CMLL belt despite the NWA branding), the UWA World Junior Light Heavyweight Championship (originally from Mexico’s UWA promotion, though that company was defunct by this time), the WAR International Junior Heavyweight Championship (from Wrestle Association R), the WWA World Junior Light Heavyweight Championship (from the Mexican company World Wrestling Association), and the WWF Light Heavyweight Championship (created as part of the working relationship between the WWF and UWA but realistically controlled exclusively by the UWA until it folded and was then transferred to Japan).

As I mentioned up top, I didn’t want to consider indy championships for this answer, just major promotion belts. The J-Crown is really a mix of the two. The IWGP Title is legitimately a significant belt for NJPW and has been for most of its existence. The International Junior Heavyweight Title was promoted by WAR, and WAR in the mid-1990s was at least as big in Japan as TNA was in the US in 2016, and we already talked about Bobby Lashley’s title reigns there. The NWA World Welterweight Title belonged to CMLL, legitimately a major promotion.

This means that the first three holders of the J-Crown, those being Great Sasuke, Ultimo Dragon, and Jushin Liger did simultaneously hold three major promotion titles. Even though the J-Crown continued to exist after that, Liger lost the WAR International Junior Heavyweight Title during his J-Crown reign, so subsequent J-Crown holders did not meet our three-title threshold.

Of course, Ultimo Dragon also won the WCW Cruiserweight Title while holding the J-Crown, meaning he held four major promotion championships at once.

That’s everybody I could think of. I’m sure the comments will let me know if there are others.

We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.