{"id":112693,"date":"2022-04-08T20:51:40","date_gmt":"2022-04-09T00:51:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=112693"},"modified":"2022-04-08T20:51:40","modified_gmt":"2022-04-09T00:51:40","slug":"gunther-ludwig-kaiser-debut-smackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2022\/04\/08\/gunther-ludwig-kaiser-debut-smackdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Gunther and Ludwig Kaiser, FKA Marcel Barthel, Debut on Friday Night SmackDown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2022\/04\/08\/preview-wwe-smackdown-not-new-era\/\" target=\"_self\">this week&#8217;s edition<\/a> of <strong><em>Friday Night SmackDown<\/em><\/strong>, <strong>Gunther<\/strong> and <strong>Ludwig Kaiser<\/strong> debuted on the blue brand. Though <strong>WWE<\/strong> fans may know Gunther as the man formerly known as <strong>WALTER<\/strong>, Kaiser is the new name of the man now previously known as <strong>Marcel Barthel<\/strong>. The duo debuted on SmackDown sans <strong>Imperium<\/strong> member <strong>Fabian Aichner<\/strong>, who was last seen on this past Wednesday&#8217;s <strong><em>NXT 2.0<\/em><\/strong>. During their tag team match, Aichner walked out on Barthel, allowing <strong>The Creed Brothers<\/strong> to pick up the victory.<\/p>\n<p>Kaiser accompanied Gunther to the ring for the latter&#8217;s in-ring <em>SmackDown<\/em> debut. Gunther took on independent talent <strong>Joe Alonzo<\/strong>, who received little to no offense during this encounter. Gunther&#8217;s trademark chops and stiff offense were on full display in this encounter. All the while, Kaiser watched from ringside. Ultimately, &#8220;The Ring General&#8221; got the win after only minutes of in-ring action, planting Alonzo with a powerbomb for the pinfall. Post-match, Gunther and Kaiser stood in the ring, posing to the crowd.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Consider the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/SmackDown?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#SmackDown<\/a> locker room on notice.<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Gunther_AUT?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@Gunther_AUT<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/naBkGhg2Xx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/naBkGhg2Xx<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; WWE (@WWE) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WWE\/status\/1512593247662714884?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">April 9, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Gunther and Ludwig Kaiser Debut on SmackDown<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h3><strong>What to Know Following Surprise Debut on Friday Night SmackDown<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>For those that are unfamiliar with Gunther and Ludwig Kaiser, they were part of a successful faction in Imperium. Kaiser and now-former tag team partner Fabian Aichner were 2x NXT Tag Team Champions. Meanwhile, Gunther stands as the longest-reigning NXT UK Champion, holding the gold for a total of 870 days.<\/p>\n<p><em>Stay tuned to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/\" target=\"_self\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a>\u00a0for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. You can check out an almost unlimited array of WWE content on the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/watch.wwe.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">WWE Network<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.peacocktv.com\/watch\/home\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Peacock<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On this week&#8217;s edition of Friday Night SmackDown, Gunther and Ludwig Kaiser debuted on the blue brand. Though WWE fans may know Gunther as the man formerly known as WALTER, Kaiser is the new name of the man now previously known as Marcel Barthel. The duo debuted on SmackDown sans Imperium member Fabian Aichner, who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3354,"featured_media":112694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2192,26,3],"tags":[8238,4140],"class_list":["post-112693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-wrestling","category-smackdown","category-wwe-universe","tag-gunther","tag-marcel-barthel"],"modified_by":"Robbie Sutter","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}