Chad Gable has learned the hard way that busting your ass in WWE doesn’t always mean you’re getting rewarded right away. The Intercontinental Champion opened up about how his amateur wrestling background helped him survive questionable creative decisions, including the Shorty G era, while accepting that some parts of his WWE career were completely out of his hands.
During an interview with WittyWhittier, Gable was asked how he has managed to stay coachable and make different characters work throughout his WWE career. Gable said that mentality goes all the way back to his amateur wrestling days, where quitting when things became difficult would have killed his chances of ever becoming an Olympian.
Gable also admitted that he wasn’t always happy with what WWE gave him creatively. Shorty G was one of those situations, but instead of checking out, he decided he was going to ride it out.
“You nailed a great word there when you said coachable. And I think a lot of that goes back to my amateur wrestling days. I’ve credited that a lot with my ability to kind of see things through character-wise, even if it’s something that, quite transparently, I wasn’t always on board with. You think of things like Shorty G and these aspects of my career that I’m not the proudest of, but I forced myself to say, ‘We’re going to see this through.’”
That mindset came directly from amateur wrestling. Gable explained that if he had quit every time things got difficult, he never would have made the Olympic team or won national championships.
“Because had I given up in my amateur wrestling career when things got hard, I would have never found myself on the Olympic team. I would have never found national championships. That’s a different avenue because the return on investment, as far as hard work and diligence in amateur wrestling, is so obvious.”
The big difference, according to Gable, is that WWE doesn’t work the same way. You can put in all the work possible and still not immediately get the push, storyline or opportunity you want.
“The harder you work and the more diligent you are, you’re going to get it back. Now, in pro wrestling, in WWE and pro wrestling in general, it doesn’t necessarily work the same way. You still have to do your diligence and your hard work. That goes into it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get this instant payoff or these instant results like you would in amateur sports.”
Gable said the lesson was learning to keep the same work ethic and toughness that carried him through amateur wrestling while accepting that WWE operates on a different timeline. Some decisions simply aren’t his to make.
“You kind of have to set your standards on, it’s about the journey, hoping that someday it’s going to pay off, because some of the decisions here, some things are out of your control, and you have to accept that. So it was just me having to learn, keep everything you learn in amateur wrestling, work ethic-wise and tenacity-wise, but understand that it’s going to take a lot longer here and accept that.”
Gable’s career is a pretty good example of exactly what he’s talking about. He went from Shorty G and creative stretches he openly admits he wasn’t proud of to becoming one of WWE’s most established performers, and his approach was simply to keep working even when there was no guarantee of an immediate payoff.
What do you think about Chad Gable admitting that hard work in WWE doesn’t always produce immediate results, and do you think sticking with bad creative ultimately helped his career? Let us know your thoughts and feedback in the comments.
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