In the past 12 months, Gunther has retired Goldberg, John Cena, and AJ Styles. On SmackDown just eight days before SummerSlam 2026, WWE subtly teased him retiring another major name.
The 24th July episode of SmackDown opened with The Ring General, Gunther, in a contract signing for his match against Nick Aldis at SummerSlam 2026. The SmackDown General Manager officially relinquished his executive role in order to compete at SummerSlam, making Adam Pearce the de-facto (temporary) General Manager. Naturally, tensions were high right off the bat because it had been brewing for months and has finally exploded. Aldis, for his part, seemed more than happy to relinquish his role and said that despite the fact that Gunther has retired Goldberg, John Cena, and AJ Styles, Aldis was entering the ring after nearly three years and had absolutely nothing to lose.
Thanks for the submission!
During the segment, Gunther vowed to make Nick Aldis the next person on the list by retiring the 2-time NWA World Heavyweight Champion.
After this, they got into a brawl that Adam Pearce attempted to pull apart, but failed to do so. This directly resulted in The Ring General hitting Aldis in the nether regions, leading to Aldis getting taken out and sent through the table.
We are going to have to see how the final segment on SmackDown plays out next week prior to SummerSlam 2026. Usually, the rule of thumb is that whoever stands tall ends up losing the match. This isn’t always the case, but it happens often enough to be noticed.
So it is certainly interesting that Aldis has been getting destroyed by the Austrian so far, although this week on SmackDown, he showed his own. Not many fans know this, but Aldis also had an epic couple of matches with Cody Rhodes where he lost and regained the NWA World Heavyweight Championship.
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Edited by Rohit Nath