Gable Steveson walked into WWE with an Olympic gold medal, a fat contract and expectations that most Performance Center recruits could only dream about. Behind the scenes, however, it sounds like the shine came off him fast.
Steveson’s disastrous 12-second UFC loss sparked a much bigger conversation on Wrestling Observer Radio about what went wrong during his WWE run. Dave Meltzer said Steveson’s raw athletic gifts were never the problem, but claimed people around him were working harder while the highly paid prospect simply wasn’t developing at the same pace.
Meltzer pointed directly to Steveson’s brother, Bobby Steveson, and Bronson Rechsteiner, better known today as Bron Breakker, as examples of wrestlers who were putting in serious work while Gable struggled to make the same progress.
“You know, I can’t argue it. I mean, in WWE, I mean, here’s the other thing. Like, some people are so naturally talented and Jon Jones is one of them as well, you know, just so naturally talented that they can. I don’t know if they work as hard as other people. I know, in WWE, when he was there, you know, people got mad at me for saying this. This was, you know, and then said, ‘Oh, it’s the Wolf Heart thing,’ right? And it wasn’t. It’s like he was not like it was always. His brother works his ass off in practice. Bronson Rexteiner works his ass off in practice. Gable Steveson, you know, it’s like, ‘Oh, we got this guy and we pay him all this money.’ And, you know, he’s just, you know, you could. You could see he didn’t progress as fast as the other people. And he doesn’t have a lot of natural charisma anyway.”
Then there was the money problem. Meltzer said Steveson was making considerably more than the people grinding beside him, which created an obvious recipe for resentment when the guy holding the monster deal wasn’t exactly running circles around everyone in training.
“And the thing is, he. He rubbed, you know. I mean, there was gonna be the resentment because he was getting paid way more than everybody else. I mean, he was. I don’t know what he was paid, but when he, you know, because he was, you know, I mean, they signed him when he was very young and they offered him a ridiculous amount.”
There were signs years ago that WWE’s grand Steveson experiment wasn’t going according to plan. Ringside News exclusively revealed in 2022 that Steveson wasn’t even on the list of talent being discussed for creative, after earlier reviews of his training progress had failed to impress.
Things didn’t exactly get prettier once Meltzer started talking about Steveson’s dark matches. WWE paired him with Trevor Lee, better known as Cameron Grimes, precisely because Lee was the kind of veteran worker who could help someone inexperienced get through a match. According to Meltzer, even that wasn’t enough to hide the problems.
“And it was. It was Trevor Lee worked with him at a bunch of dark matches that was the opponent, because Trevor Lee such a great worker. Right? And I remember seeing two of them, and they were, you know, they weren’t good. And I know how good Trevor Lee is.”
Then came the line that really says everything about how Steveson was viewed during that stretch. Meltzer claimed Lee tore into Steveson after his own WWE exit and said the Olympic champion had developed a bad reputation inside the company.
“And when he got cut Trevor Lee just ripped on the guy like he doesn’t want to do anything he, you know what I mean. And so he had a bad. He had a bad rep there.”
Meltzer went on to contrast Steveson with fighters who weren’t handed everything by natural athletic ability and therefore had to turn themselves into obsessive workers just to survive. His point was that sometimes being ridiculously gifted early can become a problem once raw talent alone stops carrying the load.
“And it’s like, I don’t, you know, I don’t know that he’s, you know, it’s. It’s. It’s. It’s different, like it’s. It’s like a guy who has to overcompensate for not being so great, being good, but not great and becomes a training machine like Randy Couture. Those guys seem to do better when they’re older because, you know, they know how to. They’re. They’re training heart’s a way of life when you get it so easy, when you get older, sometimes, you know, you fall off the cliff.”
WWE finally released Steveson in May 2024, ending one of the strangest failed experiments the company had taken on in years. He arrived with every physical credential imaginable, but if Meltzer’s account is accurate, the problems weren’t about whether Steveson could throw somebody across a room — they were about everything WWE needed him to become once the wrestling stopped being amateur.
WWE spent years waiting for Gable Steveson to turn elite athletic ability into pro wrestling stardom, and it simply never happened. Now we’re getting a much uglier picture of the frustration surrounding that run, including resentment over his money, disappointing dark matches and a reputation that apparently wasn’t doing him any favors.
What do you make of the claims about Gable Steveson’s reputation inside WWE? Do you think WWE gave him enough time to figure it out, or did he waste an opportunity most wrestlers would kill to get? Leave your feedback in the comments.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
