Congratulations to WWE World Heavyweight Champion Gunther!

It's been a rather rough week for Gunther since he was reduced to a pre-recorded segment on the WWE RAW Netflix launch show while SmackDown's champion Cody Rhodes was featured on the event and even cut a promo backstage. Many felt that the RAW champion was not treated right.

The Ring General is the World Heavyweight Champion but since he isn't included in the Bloodline story in WWE at present, it seems that the company is struggling to include him in as many angles as Rhodes.

However, it seems the current champion does have something to celebrate this weekend since it's the anniversary of his debut on WWE TV. The 37-year-old made his debut on the January 12 NXT Takeover Blackpool event in 2019.

Gunther was known as WALTER at the time and confronted Pete Dunne, who was the reigning United Kingdom Champion. The two men then stepped into a feud for the next three months before capturing the Gunther championship just three months later.

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Gunther is the reigning World Heavyweight Champion who is on the WWE RAW brand

It's been an interesting few months for The Ring General since he removed Giovanni Vinci from Imperium and then defeated Damian Priest at SummerSlam back in August to win the World Heavyweight Championship for the first time.

Gunther has become the subject of a lot of speculation heading into WrestleMania since there are a number of stars who could challenge for his title. There have been rumors that it could be Seth Rollins, John Cena, Goldberg, or Logan Paul over the past week, which proves that WWE is playing this one very close to their chest.

It will be interesting to see if he defends his championship at the Royal Rumble in a few weeks' time or if the winner of the men's match decides to challenge him at WrestleMania 41 over Cody Rhodes.