Chad Gable Says Multiple Factors Led To The El Grande Americano Program

Chad Gable says the success of WWE’s El Grande Americano storyline came from a series of unexpected events, including the injury that forced him away from television and changed the direction of the angle.

The masked persona debuted earlier this year after Gable’s growing obsession with lucha libre and his repeated frustrations with Rey Mysterio and the Latino World Order. Claiming to have reinvented himself, Gable appeared under the El Grande Americano mask and quickly became one of WWE’s most discussed characters. The storyline culminated in a Mask vs. Mask match at AAA Noche de Los Grandes, where Gable lost his original El Grande Americano mask. The fallout from that match has continued to shape his current WWE run, including his on-screen apology tour on RAW.

Speaking with Good Karma Wrestling, Gable reflected on the storyline and admitted he never imagined the El Grande Americano character would develop into one of his most memorable WWE programs.

According to Gable, the storyline unfolded the way it did because several unforeseen factors came together at the right time. He suggested there were more behind-the-scenes circumstances than fans currently know and said those details may become public one day. The biggest factor, he explained, was his injury. Gable said that if he had not been sidelined, the story would have taken a completely different path (via Fightful).

“Not a chance, no way. That’s one of the best things about wrestling: 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 onto, or why. When you really think about the path that we had to go on to get to that point, it would’ve never happened if it weren’t for so many different variables. Someday, everyone I think will become privy to how many there actually were, there’s a lot more than people even know about. Something as obvious as my injury and me having to go away, if I hadn’t gotten injured, none of this would’ve ever taken the route that it did. It’s just magic, man, that’s what wrestling is. The story is not written from the beginning, the ending isn’t determined from the beginning. We can go a million different directions; sometimes it creates magic.”

Gable’s comments follow a run in which the El Grande Americano character became one of WWE’s most talked-about storylines. The program eventually led to a Mask vs. Mask match and continues to influence Gable’s current television role, including his ongoing apology storyline on WWE RAW.