Before Gunther won the Intercontinental Championship in 2022, before he held the NXT UK Championship for nearly 900 days, and before he even signed a contract with WWE in the first place, he was Walter, the Austrian monster who had over 900 matches on his resume split over a 17-year independent career.

How does it feel to jump from working a few matches a year to a few dozen a month sometimes in WWE? And how does it feel to know he's worked dozens of incredible matches over his career before he even made his main roster debut? Well, Sean Ross Sapp over at Fightful decided to as the “Ring General” that very question in the lead-up to SummerSlam, and the answer he learned and Gunther's mindset was incredibly interesting.

“It’s crazy, right? Everything happens so fast,” Gunther said via Fightful. “I for myself, I honestly gotta say I don’t feel very different to how I felt during that time professionally. I go out there and do what I do that night to the best of my abilities. Thankfully, I’m a position where that’s what people like to see. I think, like I said, I go step by step. What happened is behind me. What’s in front of me, that’s tomorrow. I’m gonna focus on today. I’m not a person that reminisces a lot about the past or dreams about the future. I try to stay focused on the moment and get the most out of it. But at some point, I think once it’s all said and done with my career or there’s a break or something like that, I’m gonna take time and re-enjoy a lot of those.”

Is Gunther serious about that assertion? Does he really not focus on his future or past in the ring and simply keep his mind on the task at hand? Or does he, like everyone else, actually worry about his legacy and what sort of opportunities are hanging just over the horizon? When you're rapidly approaching the all-time record for the longest Intercontinental Championship reign in WWE history, clearly, whatever process he has going on is working.

Corey Graves believes Gunther may not be Imperium's only main event star.

Sitting down for another taping of his weekly podcast, After The Bell, Corey Graves used some of the time not committed to his guests to talk about Ludwig Kaiser, who was a featured member of the final RAW he's expected to call for the foreseeable future before being moved over to SmackDown full-time alongside Kevin Patrick and Michael Cole.

Though Kaiser did win his match against Otis, even if it didn't win over Maxxine Dupri to Imperium's cause, Graves believes the second-generation wrestling star has a chance to become an even bigger star if WWE decides to pull the trigger.

“Ludwig Kaiser has been a piece of the Imperium machine. He has been the perfect set dressing on the main event that is Gunther. But after seeing what I saw on Monday, I'm gonna make a bold prediction right here, right now: Ludwig Kaiser, sooner rather than later, should be a main event player in WWE. I'm not expecting it to happen overnight. I'm not expecting him to be the one to knock off Gunther or anything of the sort, but he was so captivating, entertaining, eloquent, and all these other adjectives. But watching him interact with Maxxine, Ludwig Kaiser felt like a full-blown movie villain,” Corey Graves said via Wrestling Inc.

“I expect big things out of Ludwig Kaiser in the not-too-distant future because, man, that dude can do it all,” Graves said. “I do expect fun, entertaining segments from him now. I don't think that's out of the realm of possibility now to say, ‘Yeah, I expect that from him all the time,' and then awesome in-ring matches. Because Kaiser is European wrestling royalty. Second-generation. Kaiser is as good as we say he is from bell to bell. From a technical skills aspect, he might be top 10 in WWE.”

Though WWE almost never mentions it on its weekly or digital programming, Kaiser is actually the son of European legend Axel Dieter and won titles all over the world under the Axel Dieter Jr. moniker. With good size, even better mic skills, and nine indie titles on his resume, if WWE wants to pull off an Imperium Civil War at some point in the future, allowing Kaiser to shed everything he's been tasked with and focus on the internal magic he brings to the table would be a big way to accomplish that feat, whether he goes by his current moniker, Axel Dieter Jr., or even his NXT name, Marcel Barthel.