wrestling / Columns

Cook: Chad Gable is Ready, Willing & Gable

July 21, 2017 | Posted by Steve Cook
Chad Gable WWE Main Event

Tag teams don’t have a very long shelf life in WWE. Years ago Larry Csonka & myself would spend hours on podcasts talking about how we grew up on good ol Southern tag team wrestling and how it was a shame that WWE would split teams up early and never give them any real run on top of the cards while they were together. By now I think we both realize that it is what it is, and there’s no point in whining about it.

American Alpha was a great in-ring tag team. Two incredible athletes with solid amateur wrestling backgrounds that combined to form a type of naturally talented wrestling team we haven’t seen since the early days of Charlie Haas & Shelton Benjamin. As a fan of tag team wrestling, I would have loved to see Chad Gable & Jason Jordan stay together for years. I really would have loved to put them in a time machine and have them work the likes of the Midnight Express, the Brainbusters & the Hart Foundation. That would have been some good times indeed.

The reality was that the days of American Alpha as a tag team were always numbered. Its the nature of WWE. Even if a team is tremendously over & selling merchandise, there’s always going to be a desire by WWE brass to split them up and see if one of them can be a singles star. Singles wrestling always has been and always will be WWE’s focus.

In all fairness to WWE, it’s not like Gable & Jordan set the world on fire during their time as a team on the main roster either. Sure, they had some really good matches and a reign with the SmackDown tag team championships. Unfortunately, they never quite connected with the crowd in the way they did with the NXT fans. They were champions, but were never treated as a priority. They were often lucky to make the pre-show of a PPV. Their feuds were non-existent.

You could see the writing on the wall when Chad Gable started having singles matches with the likes of Kevin Owens & AJ Styles. With American Alpha having done nothing memorable since losing the tag team championships, it only made sense for Gable to test the singles waters. It’s not like he & Jordan were regularly getting on SD as a tag team. Gable didn’t beat Owens or Styles, but he looked impressive in defeat and hung with two of the best singles wrestlers in the game.

It’s a good thing he got that experience, because Jason Jordan had some plans of his own.

Reaction to the shocking revelation that Jason Jordan’s biological father is Kurt Angle has been mixed to say the least. I was happy because I mentioned it as a possibility last week. It’s either going to make Jason one of the biggest stars in WWE for years to come or turn him into a hilarious footnote. There’s no real in-between here. He’s going to be an A or an F. I can’t say for sure which way it’s going to go, but for Jason Jordan’s sake I hope it works. He seems like a good guy and he’s a tremendous athlete with a lot of upside.

What we do know for sure is that he’s going to Raw and American Alpha is no more. I love the fact that for once we have a tag team splitting up and they aren’t going to immediately feud with each other. That’s always an option down the road, but for right now Chad Gable has been nothing but supportive of Jason’s move to Raw.

Add in an emotional Instagram post (I don’t do Instagram, as I believe only attractive women should be on Instagram), and what we have here is a very amiable split. Chad realizes that Jason has to go chase his dreams over on the red brand, and what that means is that now he can chase his dreams on the blue brand. SmackDown Live. The Land of Opportunity. If there’s a place for a guy like Chad Gable to make his bones, it’s on SmackDown.

Chad Gable was an Olympian. He represented the United States of America on the largest stage of amateur wrestling. No, he didn’t reach the heights of Kurt Angle and become a Gold Medalist. He had to work his way through the Olympic Trials and won that competition though, so his patriotic bonafides are there. He didn’t make it so far in the 2012 Olympics, but he at least made it as far as Mark Henry made it in the 1996 weightlifting competition, and Mizark’s been living off that for two decades.

I don’t know if you guys have noticed this lately or not, but SmackDown Live has gone pretty heavy on anti-American bad guys. The current WWE Champion is Jinder Mahal, an Indian-Canadian grappler that has taken to bashing America ever since making his way to the blue brand. He’s found some actual success while doing it, so it’s tough to blame him. Kevin Owens, a Canadian-Canadian, declared himself the New Face of America shortly after arriving on SmackDown and has continued his passive-aggressive stance towards ‘Merica even after AJ Styles took the United States Championship from him in the World’s Most Famous Arena. Rusev, the Bulgarian Brute, is facing John Cena in a Flag Match at Battleground this Sunday, so obviously he’s the greatest threat to America at this given moment.

The bottom line is that SmackDown Live has really become a USA vs. Everybody show since the Superstar Shakeup. I can only speculate as to why this has happened…and of course all of my speculation leads to the politics of the WWE brass, which I’m probably still banned from talking about here given my political stances, most of which oppose the politics of the WWE brass. Basically, WWE is all about America today since Linda McMahon is helping make America great again. I can say that, right?

If SmackDown Live is all about American patriots standing against evil foreign heels, Chad Gable is in a really good place to succeed. He’s already set his sights on the US Championship…obviously AJ Styles will be a tough champion to unseat, as would be Kevin Owens, but the more time Chad spends in the ring with these gentlemen, the more likely it is that he will succeed. If he wraps himself in the American flag that he competed for in 2012, it’s pretty much a certainty that he will succeed…and even if he doesn’t, he’ll at least win the love of the WWE Universe.

Jason Jordan’s future is completely up in the air. I have no idea if he’ll do well or not. Chad Gable…I have no doubt that he’ll succeed. He’s got America behind him. Some people will tell you that the fact he’s 5’8 & 202 lbs hurts his cause…I mean, did we learn nothing from Daniel Bryan? If the people really want somebody to succeed, WWE will eventually get over their height & weight bias. Chad’s not going to get pushed to the moon overnight. He’ll have to fight, scratch and crawl for everything. But if he does that, and he proves that he deserves to be in main events and holding championships, WWE will eventually have no choice but to do exactly that.

Given the atmosphere of SmackDown Live these days, I don’t think Chad Gable could ask for a better environment to succeed in. He will be ready, willing and Gable.

article topics :

Chad Gable, Smackdown, WWE, Steve Cook