Gunther brutalized Dragon Lee on Raw in February, and the fallout quickly sent fans down one familiar path: if the champion was being lined up for another marquee opponent, was Rey Mysterio next? The answer, for now, appears to be no.
That was the question hanging over the aftermath of the segment, with one viewer voice cutting straight to it: “Wait, does that mean Mysterio is retiring?” But the latest read on the situation is reassuring for anyone who was already picturing an exit, because “Thankfully that option appears to be off the cards for a few years yet.”
The speculation came from the way Gunther handled Dragon Lee in February, when the attack looked less like a one-off ambush and more like the opening beat of a longer program. In the minds of some fans, that made Rey Mysterio the obvious next name, especially with the WrestleMania season approaching and WWE still searching for the best fit for Gunther.
That uncertainty mattered because the company did not seem to have a sharply defined plan for Gunther during that stretch. The angle on Dragon Lee became a kind of placeholder for bigger possibilities, and Mysterio’s name rose because he is the kind of opponent who can turn a rumor into a real match with very little buildup.
But the bigger picture has shifted. What looked in February like the start of a road to Mysterio now looks more like a detour, and the retirement chatter that followed it has lost its urgency. Gunther instead ended up matched with Seth Rollins, which closed off the immediate path that had fans connecting the dots from Raw to WrestleMania 42.
That does not remove Mysterio from the conversation entirely. It just pushes the idea back into the future, and the timeline matters. A Rey Mysterio match with Gunther may still be something WWE can use later, but the current read is that it is not the next chapter — and not a signal that Mysterio is on the way out any time soon.