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Chad Gable On Wyatt Sicks, Heel Turn, Kurt Angle Comparisons, Olympics, "Shoosh! & Ah-Thank You!"
Chad Gable (@WWEGable) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Minneapolis, MN to discuss his transition from amateur wrestling at the Olympics to becoming a professional wrestler, the comparisons to "Perc Angle" in TNA, if he was ever in conversation to be Kurt Angle's son, the origin of the "Shoosh!" and "Thank You" catchphrases, being the focus of the Wyatt Sicks debut, why there has never been a bad Chad Gable match, the first time he met Otis and more!
Quote I'm thinking about: "Embarrassment is the cost of entry. If you aren't willing to look like a foolish beginner, you'll never look like a graceful master." - Ed Latimore
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"It's just become a passion of mine and it's not even like a vanity thing or anything. But training and just physical well-being, because of what it does for me, and mentally, what I find helps. The more you dive into everything, and I know you've experienced some of this and the deeper you get into just taking care of different elements of your life, the physical part of it is kind of the foundation that bleeds into everything. Because the better you take care of yourself physically. Obviously, you feel better, but that transforms your mind, man. It takes care of everything else in your life. So when you place that at the forefront, at least that's what I found, it's crazy what it does to your world."
"I don't know about shredded, but somebody posted a picture of me 10 years ago at a NXT show or something compared to now. And just the difference of like, I don't know, just you can tell I'm doing it right now compared to then. I am just a larger, I think a bigger, more appropriate version for what I'm doing. The effort that I'm putting in is paying off compared to then because then it was just like, so much effort and so much. I just wanted it so bad and I was applying so much time and effort into the gym and I just didn't look any different. It feels good to know that trusting somebody that knows what they're doing to guide you really works and I think that's what it takes. It's handing over the reins once in a while. Even if you think you know better."
"Yeah, that was that was quite a night. Out of everything I've done over the past couple of years, the response to that was so out of this world insane. People thought [I was dead], I can't tell you the amount of people that thought something actually happened to me. I went to church that Sunday and ran into a little kid who was watching. I was kind of hiding my head from him and he was like making his way around me to get a look at my head. And he's like 'Where did it [the wound] go?' I'm like, 'Well, I mean, I fixed it bud, I went to the hospital and stuff, it was bad.' And he's like 'What did they do to you?' I'm like, 'You'll have to tune in tomorrow night.' They were into it, it was really interesting."
"I mean, you saw him definitely rattled like he's never been before, which was cool. What the storyline has done is it came at this awesome time when I had just done the turn. I had become this abusive coaching character, which people got a whole new look which I thought did wonders for me. Then all of a sudden at the same congruently the Wyatts came in and forced me to be vulnerable. So we get Chad Gable, who's this abusive over the top, shows no vulnerability, and now he's forced to. So you're getting these two dynamic stories at the same time. I benefit from this and not a lot of people get to dip their hands in so many different stories at one time. It's almost like every time I show up for TV each week it's like well, what are we doing for this story? What are we doing for this one? And this one, and this one… My toes are in so many things right now and I mean, how grateful, that's such a great place to be."
"It was going to be that I was going to be the lone guy kind of laid out. Initially, we didn't really know to what degree. But when we got it ready to go, we'll say we were blown away, like, holy crap, what exactly happened to me here? We're not sure and we just ran with it. There was no plan, we kind of saw how it worked out. And it worked out, I think, to our advantage better than we expected. Because the response to that from an audience standpoint was just out of this world. I think it just helped the whole intro of the family and their aura and they've been doing so great with that. You can tell the audience they're just taken aback by them. Every single week, the vibe in the crowd, you'll see it tomorrow night when you're there, maybe you have already. But it's something else when you're out there in the arena, and they show up man."
"That's special for a number of reasons. Bo, he's so excited about this, and he should be, but I feel his energy and his anxiety, the good anxiety, he has his pacing back and forth before watching him. And it's similar to watch, eerie in a way, but also so comforting because Windham was very similar and I had the very good fortune to work with Widham when I first got called up to SmackDown. We were on a European tour, my first ever, and he was with Randy at the time. We were over there, me and Jason Jordan as American Alpha, we're doing some other match, I don't even know what it was. But then they watched us work the first night and requested to work with us like the rest of the tour. So the whole card got flipped around. So for 9 or 10 days straight over there in the UK and in Europe, we worked with Randy and Bray every night, and it was awesome. They just had nothing but the nicest stuff to say about us afterwards. They dropped the tag team titles to us about a month later, which to me was just like a nod to us as you guys are great. But I learned a lot from Bray in that time and just gained the utmost respect for him. Because he's one of those guys that when he speaks his mind or gives you feedback you listen. Nothing he says feels like he's just saying it. Hey, kid, here's a piece of advice. It's like he's looking at you, and offering you his real piece of mind. And something I found about myself that I've kind of discovered over the past few years, and this happens with Randy too, or I find with people that I hold in very high regard. I don't always have like these, I'm not texting him all the time. I don't have those types of relationships where I'm constantly staying in touch every day and I'm talking to them. But when they say something to me, I store it somewhere in here, and it means so much to me. Bray was one of those people and Randy's one of those people. So now, like you said, to your point, to be selected as the first guy to have to work with Bray or to work with Bo as he carries on Bray’s legacy. To me, I get to play a small part in carrying on the legacy, which is so special. So when he gave me Windham’s old finisher the other night. I wanted to make it look good, put some stank on it and make it look a little extra special to go that was for you my friend and now also for Bo as he carries it on. So I think all of us that are playing a part in this right now are in a very special position and a very delicate one to carry it on and do it in the right way. So it's balanced like a golden egg, take care of it. It's a cool, cool thing."
"That's a feather in my cap then, because I took pride for a long time when any match I got on TV could only be like 90 seconds or two minutes at times. But also some people might write that off and be like, well, it's just a two-minute match, let's just go do it. It's like no, man, I have two minutes tonight, let's see just how good we can make two minutes. I had a good run there doing that for a while, it's kind of like almost, there's an art to it. It's kind of artistic to be like, Well, you got a four-minute match with Finn Balor. I think I had one of those a while [ago], he's one of my closest friends and one of my favorite people in the world. We could have very well went out and had a little four-minute forgettable thing, but it's like, let's just tear it down for four minutes. I did it with Big E too for a while, five-minute matches and stuff. There's like a clever little art to it and it's fun and you're painting a little bit. I find joy in that. So thank you for saying that."
"I mean, what an honor. First of all, it's so funny when that stuff started coming out because I'm like, oh, here we go, now we're cooking. Like the week after it came out. For those that didn't see we come back from a tour overseas. I can't remember where but, we went to one of my favorite coffee shops called Perk. And I was like, Oh my gosh, did the stars align on this one? I walked into the coffee, they got the big sign and I'm like, Nikki [Otis], do the picture of me with this stuff. It just lined up so perfect. And people just latched on to it. And then like the coffee place sent me a big box, all this Perk merch. I got Perk shirts and bags of Perk Coffee and stickers all over my house. And it just worked out really well. But all that to say like Kurt is the man dude, he's been so cool. throughout everything we've done with him. I got to wrestle him, which was insane."
"Stone face all the time, no emotion. Coming into NXT, when I first came in, that was certainly the hardest thing was letting yourself be vulnerable and that applies to life too. But letting yourself be vulnerable in wrestling, I think is a big part of it and something that I had a lot of trouble with. Obviously, in amateur wrestling, you don't go out there and show emotion to your opponent or show them how you're feeling. But at NXT I got down there and I'll never forget my first Tuesday when I got thrust in front of presentation skills class, basically promo class with Dusty Rhodes in front of like 80 of my now peers, who are just these larger than life personalities, every one of them and they were experienced in doing this, and I get called up in front of everybody and with the camera and red lights on. And they're like, Give us something. Well, what do you mean? They're like, show us character, anything? I hope nobody pulls up any of my old stuff that I did there. Because I mean, talk about anxiety and stress in front of that many people trying to make an impression but having no clue what you're doing. It was the worst, but you're either forced to sink or swim at that point, it's like, get over it. And thankfully, I did think pretty quickly. But I was surrounded by great people, there’s so many people down in NXT that had no reason to help me and be welcoming, but they were. And to my benefit, I have a lot of people to thank from down there."
"So, I mean, Doug Williams, the OG of chaos theory, was one of my main influences when I was around that age, 14 or whatever, and tape trading. And I like I said, me and my friend Kurt Pope in the backyard. I tried it out. I was very young and a lot smaller than but then I wish I could remember the first time I tried it in NXT. I was like well I used to do that when I was 14, I can probably still pull it off now. I did it and no one else was doing it at the time and no one in the company even. Saw I was like, claim it, put my mark on it. I'll keep it but it's a unique movement. It's one of those things that I always struggled with because when they tell you to pick your finisher, not that's necessarily a finisher, my finish but it's a pretty spectacular move and you but if you're going to do a move like that, that's gonna be signature they always say like you make sure you can do it on everybody and it's, it's like, oh, that one I don't know about that. But I pulled it off on Braun Strowman. So like, who else is there that I'm gonna need to do it on? He's a big dude. It's pretty it's pretty gnarly dude. It just speaks to, not my athletic ability, but that of the people I'm working with. I mean, everybody's necks aren't in great condition. And that's you're going straight over your neck on that move every single time. But when we talk about performance and what we do, there's a lot of that that goes into that move. And it's, it's a difficult one."
"I hope so. I feel like I also am disappointed in the fact that I didn't grab one during that whole run [against Sami Zayn]. Because I also don't want to give the fans the impression that like, well he's great, but he's also just the guy that can't win the big one, where I know I am and I know I can. But what this is doing is I think for me building that first one to mean almost as much as maybe it's ever meant for anybody. I've come so close so many times, the Gunther stuff, what it did for my career, what Gunther did for my career can't be overstated. I have him to thank for so much the way he elevated me. Then moving on to the stuff with Sami, from a storytelling perspective alongside the in-ring perspective, we got so much accomplished in such a short amount of time. I feel like for both of us that it left just the right amount on the table for me as a singles guy to be like he did so much there, he got so much done, but he didn't win the championship. So we've got one piece of the puzzle left to fill in, and I'm almost happy it didn't happen then, because of what we got done there. It didn't need it. I didn't need it. But now I do and so now it's still on the table."
"I've often said, probably to nobody's surprise, that was a pretty low point. But again, and I don't want to get too repetitive but I was asking for opportunities on a weekly basis at that point. I was going into offices and being like, Look, I need to work, I need to do anything. Because I really wasn't doing anything. So I was given the Shorty G character persona. The last thing I'm going to do, my personality, the last thing I'm going to do is scoff at it and not give it whatever I can. Whatever effort I can is going to go into that because I've asked for it. I asked for anything, an opportunity and I was given it. So I did the most I could with it. I think what it showed was that I am willing to contribute in whatever manner, if it's down here, or up here, I'm willing to contribute whatever I can and whatever is asked of me. Once you've proven that, that you're going to do that and you're not going to put on a booboo face and sit around and sulk around because you're not happy with it. Then look at this guy, let's give him some more. Okay, he showed us his grit, he showed us that he's here for the long run. And I think that worked to my benefit hopefully."
"How unique of a situation to where she's really learning to wrestle week by week in front of a live TV audience. Because at the time she wasn't even doing live events, all she was doing was coming to TV and learning there to work, and then go into the Performance Center in Orlando. But we got to a point where we knew she was going to start having some singles matches. And to her credit, she asked me to get in the ring with her at shows before TV and stuff, which of course I did. So we would work on, I kept telling her let's do the basics, because we're at a level and with our company I think what's most appreciated and to me, at least what stands out the most with new people is when they do the basic things really, really well. Not some flashy new flip or something or new move that looks cool, that doesn't impress me. Someone doing the old-school stuff really well and snug and they were taught properly, that impresses me."
"Shoosh I stole from Pauly Shore’s movie Encino Man. The bully, the high school jock bully, just said shoosh like 100 times in the movie and it was so funny. Like it was so annoyingly funny. I'll never forget the first time I did it. We had this one night and I think COVID had kind of interrupted the plans because a bunch of people got sick, had to stay home, all this stuff. It was Detroit, if I remember right, and me and Otis were thrust into this promo seg to open the show. I don't know where it was, they're like, Well, you guys can walk and talk and do a promo tonight. I’m like I can say what? They're like whatever. I was like we were waiting for this. So I pulled out all these Pauly Shore references and these Always Sunny references, absurd stuff that I just liked. It was the first time I ever just did stuff that I liked because I had the chance. And lo and behold, the stuff I liked is what resonated with people and it was like this light bulb. The crazy thing is you get people that will tell you this, and it happens in all avenues of life. You get advice from people but it never really clicks until you just do it for once. It was like all this stuff I like resonated with the people and stuck and who would have thought it'd be something as stupid as saying thank you and shoosh."
"I think that was by accident as well. That was stolen from I think Always Sunny if I'm pulling my right reference, because Charlie on one of the episodes of Always Sunny, he says thank you like three times in a row. But like the last time he said it, he kind of drifts off because I think he had huffed something. And I always heard that last time you said it and I was like, That's really funny. And then it was when I got my master's degree, and I was being this obnoxious, schmuck, so to thank people I said it like that. And then I just heard the people's response and I was like, Oh, that one's gonna stay, that's gonna stick."
"There was never any talk of any of that until it happened. We found out about that whole thing the day before, or two days before. We got called in, they told us the deal and up until that point, we thought we were just hunky dory tag team for the long run. But that night, they sent Jason to wherever TV was, and they sent me to Birmingham, Alabama. I just sat in my hotel room and watched Monday Night Raw as they announced. And I said, What? Okay. And that was it. And that's how I found out it."
"You would think so [laughs]. Yeah, I don't know. I think Jason, I mean, what a talent first of all, but he was such a strapping young lad, and probably in the company's eyes at that point in time, out of the two of us. I mean, dude, besides his unfortunate injury, he was going to be a superstar. He was often running with the stuff he was doing with Seth Rollins. And I know he got a lot of crap when he first started with the stuff with Kurt and the character he had taken on. But people didn't realize that was how you were supposed to feel about that character. He was playing it perfectly and everyone was very critical of a lot of the traits that the character was doing and I'm like, you're doing it right, that's what you're supposed to be doing. Right before his injury, he was peaking and he was getting all these awesome singles matches, he had wrestled Cena and he was wrestling all these guys just killing it, dude. What an unfortunate end. But thankfully, he's taken on a producer position. I mean, every time he tells me that he's got my segment or my matches, I'm like, oh baby, music to my ears."
“Family, that I have rediscovered God and Jesus and extending my relationship with WWE.”
