The transition from technical wizard to full-blown villain
Chad Gable is currently the guy you want for everything in wrestling. He can out-wrestle anybody on the card, but for a stretch, he had to figure out how to make a Mexican crowd absolutely despise his existence. Wrestling under the mask as El Grande Americano in AAA, he had to shed the amateur style that made him a mid-card king and adopt the kind of dark-arts mentality that gets you showered in trash.
Standing in the center of the ring in an AAA ring is like trying to sell water to a fish while simultaneously insulting their grandmother. Gable admitted it got uncomfortable. He stepped into a role that removed his technical safety net and forced him to exist purely on heat. Most WWE guys show up to independent dates and get the 'we love you' pop because their mere presence is a novelty. Gable did the opposite.
The psychological warfare of the mask
When you put a mask on a guy whose face is already synonymous with an Olympic background, you are playing with fire. The AAA crowd saw through the gimmick of El Grande Americano pretty quickly. They knew who they were looking at, but that only made them boo louder because he wasn't playing the babyface they wanted to see. He had to pivot his style from clean suplexes to cheap shots and tactical interference.
It is impressive that he leaned into the fear factor of the booking. Keeping the crowd in the palm of your hand when they have every reason to reject a foreign import is a tall order. He wasn't just working a match; he was working the entire building. As Wrestletalk reported, Gable recently noted that the experience was admittedly a little scary at times. Getting that kind of genuine vitriol from a rabid audience is something you cannot coach, even with the mentors he has had.
The missed opportunity in the booking
I have to keep it real: the whole El Grande Americano run felt like a missed connection for his character progression in the states. He was doing some of his darkest work down in Mexico, then returned to the WWE ring like nothing happened. We watched him struggle with his identity in the Alpha Academy debacle where he had to endure The Undertaker’s tough love to find his footing. Why didn't we see that aggressive, mask-wearing sociopath make the jump to the main roster full-time?
Instead, we keep seeing him oscillate between a goofy comedy guy and a serious grappler. He should be the guy who snaps on people. His technical brilliance is wasted if he isn't using it to actually hurt his opponents. He is currently on a trajectory of self-improvement, but he has been hitting his stride since 2013. At some point, the 'grinding' narrative has to end and the 'dominance' narrative needs to take over.
The guy is an Olympic-level athlete who has been carrying the technical burden for the entire roster for years. If he isn't at least holding a mid-card title by the fourth quarter of this year, the booking staff deserves to be fired into the sun. We are tired of seeing him get the rub only to watch him fade back into the background of a tag team drama.
The lessons he learned from his time as a heel in AAA should be the foundation for a main event run. He knows how to get under people's skin. Now he just needs the company to let him stop being the guy who gets the advice and start being the guy who gives it to the rest of the locker room via a German suplex. Eight years of waiting is enough.
