Chad Gable admits he never expected El Grande Americano to become one of WWE’s most talked-about acts.
Speaking with Good Karma Wrestling (see video below), Gable reflected on the whirlwind run of the masked character and said he’s currently in one of the best places of his wrestling career creatively. The former Alpha Academy leader also looked back fondly on the Mask vs. Mask match that ultimately brought the El Grande Americano persona to an end.
“It has been just a wild month for me, as you can imagine, as you might have seen. I’m in good spirits. I feel like I’m in some of the best head space I’ve ever been in wrestling. Things have been up and down for a long, long time. And right now, I feel like we’re in just this awesome spot where I’m just creatively fulfilled. Just everything’s going well on the show. We’ve got some great stories going on and coming off the mask vs. mask match that I was just I’m so proud of for so many reasons and we’re in a good spot.”
Gable went on to admit he never could have predicted the overwhelming fan reaction to El Grande Americano. According to Gable, the success of the character came together because of a number of unforeseen circumstances, including the injury that temporarily took him off television.
“Not a chance, you know? No way. I mean, that’s the best thing, one of the best things I think about wrestling, right, is you just never know. You never know what it is that’s going to land, what it is that the audience is going to latch on to or why really. And when you really think about the path that we had to go on to get to that point, it would have never happened if it weren’t for so many different variables there. And someday everyone, I think, will become privy to like how many there actually were. There’s a lot more than people even know about, but something as obvious as my injury, right? And me having to go away that if I hadn’t gotten injured, none of this would have ever taken the route that it did. And it’s just magic. That’s what wrestling is.”
He also recalled the exact moment he realized the storyline had truly connected with fans. Gable pointed to his first chaotic ringside brawl with Ludwig Kaiser’s version of El Grande Americano, saying the emotions felt completely genuine and changed his perspective on performing.
“I think for me it was the night if you recall that we had started our story down there a little bit. And it was the night that we got into our first big brawl around the ring and around the arena a little bit. And that started clicking not only for I think the audience, but for me because that was a moment that I was so in the moment and it felt real to me. It was visceral. Like I wanted to hurt this man so bad for taking what was mine, what I had created. And that was life or death for me for those four or five minutes or whatever it was.”
That experience, Gable said, unlocked a completely different approach to professional wrestling—one that mirrored the intensity and competitive mindset he developed through Greco-Roman and amateur wrestling.
“And when I walked away from that that night, I’m like ‘we got something here.’ This is special because I’ve never felt that way about something in the past yet. And it unlocked this whole new realm and aspect of pro wrestling for me. I’m like ‘man, I can treat this the same exact way as I treated Greco Roman wrestling, as I treated amateur wrestling.’ Like visceral, man. Like feel it, go into it a competition. I’m going to wreck this guy. And that was my mindset from that moment on out. And I think that’s really what both of our mindsets were.”
Gable’s run as El Grande Americano came to an end after he lost the Mask vs. Mask match at AAA Noche de Los Grandes on May 30, forcing him to unmask. Since then, his appearances on WWE Raw have focused on embracing lucha libre while embarking on an on-screen apology tour.
