When it comes to professional wrestlers in WWE right now, few active performers have the resume of Finn Balor.
One-half of the RAW Tag Team Champions alongside his protege, JD McDonagh, Balor has wrestled all over the world, founded Bullet Club in New Japan, and holds the distinction of being the first-ever WWE Universal Champion, even if his reign only lasted a few days due to injury.
So naturally, when Balor was asked who he believes is the best wrestler in WWE, and, by extension, the world on the What’s The Story podcast, the man occasionally known as the “Demon” delivered an answer that turned heads around the IWC, as his endorsement still holds a good bit of weight.
“WALTER, GUNTHER, whatever you wanna call him, in my opinion, is probably the best performer on Earth right now. In my opinion, to watch in the ring. I get so oversaturated seeing so much stuff that I just kinda go, ‘Ahh can’t be arsed watching this.' I’ve not seen it all, but I’ve seen so much. I’m 43 now, so it’s like watching wrestling for 35 years, so it’s rare that I go, ‘Ah, I’m interested in this,' but when WALTER gets in the ring, I’m interested. I want to see everything that he does,” Finn Balor explained via WrestleZone.
“There’s no bits where I know what he’s going to do for the next five minutes…That’s one of the few matches in my career that I want to have. We tried to set it up right before COVID in NXT UK, then the world had a different plan for us. Then we went different ways, and now, we’re both heels, so I don’t know how that would work. I’ve expressed my opinion to the office that I would love to get that match, and hopefully, we can get it done in the future.”
Would a Gunther-Balor match be entertaining in 2024? Yes, yes, it really would be, and if WWE decided to pull the trigger on that this fall in a match for the World Heavyweight Championship at, say, Bad Blood, fans would absolutely go nuts over the clash of European excellence. But hey, even if they don't work together in a formal match, that doesn't mean Balor's words hold any less value; Gunther is one of the best wrestlers in the world, and WWE is lucky they have him under contract long-term.
Finn Balor believes ratings as upping WWE's TV quality
Elsewhere in his appearance on What's The Story, Finn Balor discussed the improved quality of televised matches WWE puts on weekly, with RAW, SmackDown, and NXT all now producing quality contests with definitive finishes, as opposed to the silliness Vince McMahon enjoyed watching.
Why the change? Well, Balor believes it comes down to one thing above everything else: TV ratings.
“I feel like we have to, to get the ratings. Also, we're really f**king good at what we're doing. We're going out there and having a match, but it's really good because we're really good at what we're doing. It's a byproduct of who is in the ring that the matches are good. It's not like we're going, ‘Let's have a f**king banger tonight' or ‘Let's call it in tonight.' No, we're going out there to have the best match we can. The only thing that kind of limits you sometimes is the time. That's the one thing we have no control over, the time on the TV show,” Finn Balor told What's The Story podcast via Fightful.
“When you do this for ten years, you get good at it. That's the difference with lads like Seth, Roman (Reigns), Shinsuke (Nakamura), Cody (Rhodes), Sami (Zayn), Kevin Owens. We're doing these adjustments and people don't even know. We're talking to each other, adjusting, changing a match on the fly. I don't think people understand how skilled you have to be to do that on live television.”
There was a time in the not-too-distant past when WWE believed in a “save the finishes for the Pay-Per-Views” mindset that turned RAW, SmackDown, and NXT into nothing more than storyline generators, as opposed to a place where fans could watch quality matches that eventually lead to a bigger blowup at a premium show. Fortunately, whether due to the early success of AEW or Paul “Triple H” Levesque's ascension to the top of the WWE Universe as the new CCO, fans are getting really good matches for free on television weekly, and the real winners of it all are fans of professional wrestling.
Follow Us
Subscribe