Chad Gable On His Mask vs. Mask Match In AAA, Says The Crowd Was a Big Part Of It

Chad Gable recently reflected on his mask vs. mask match in AAA and how important crowd was to the bout. Gable, as OG El Grande Americano, battled El Grande Americano in the match at Noche de Los Grandes. Gable lost the match, a match considered one of the best of the year, and unmasked to return to his original (and now current) ring name.

Chad Gable spoke about the match and his time in AAA in his appearance on Insight With Chris Van Vliet. He said that AAA was a big factor in his career upturn and spoke about the storytelling of the bout. You can see highlights below:

On AAA Being When Things Started To Change For Him:

“Sure. I’ve had coaches my whole life, whether it’s my high school coaches, Greco-Roman coaches, that I’ve always looked up to and wanted to appease, and I’ve wanted to make them happy and satisfied with my performance. That’s been a goal of mine. It’s just bred into me from amateur wrestling. It’s a trait that doesn’t always serve me well, but it’s just that’s part of me, and that was happening with Undertaker in AAA. I don’t feel like I was giving him what he was looking for the longest time down there, and it bothered the hell out of me. Deep down to my core, it taught me a lot about myself actually, self-realization about who I’m trying to please and why and all these things- but I made it a mission. I’m like, no, I’m gonna show him that I can give him what he’s looking for, and it was that night that I did the first brawl, the ringside brawl with the other El Grande, where he finally convinced me just let it go, just show me who you are.”

On People Saying the Mask vs. Mask Match Is Match Of the Year:

“I mean, what we do is subjective, right? It’s the highest compliment to me that people think of it in those terms. I always try to not focus so much on the accomplishment or what I’ve done, but the process and the journey, who I’m becoming in this process, and what’s next. So it’s great. It’s really nice to have these compliments, especially I think some of the highest compliments I was paid were from my peers. That told me not how great the match was, but the way it made them feel that reminded them what they loved about wrestling growing up. It made them feel the way they did when they were kids. That to me is the highest compliment because that’s what I’m seeking in wrestling now is to feel the way I felt when I watched Macho Man and Warrior at WrestleMania six with all the drama with Miss Elizabeth and all these things, and that’s the kind of stuff that fueled me to want to do this. So if I can give that to other people, then I feel like I’m really doing my job.”

On Whether It’s His Best Match He’s Wrestled:

“I think it was the most dramatic, and I think I could say it’s the most dramatic match I’ve ever wrestled. “

On The Storytelling in the Match:

“Yes, it’s kind of the best of everything that we do. I think got a little bit in there. Whether it’s all these callbacks and characters that we had involved along the way, the actual wrestling in the match itself, and then some of the brutality. We got a little bit of blood, which we don’t always get a little. We got a lot. We get family, and we get the girlfriend coming back to save the day. The romance. It’s just like a movie playing out in a pro wrestling match, and to me, that’s the peak of what we do.”

On the Crowd Reaction:

“Again, I don’t think none of that would have happened to the degree that it did without the crowd. They were such a big part of it, and I don’t know that I would have even ever found myself the way that I did if I didn’t realize that you can get a reaction out of an audience like that. They showed me what’s possible, and I owe them eternally for that. Not only that, but also their level of just forgiveness after the match, willingness to listen, give me my moment for the speech, as opposed to just booing me out of the building, which they very well could have done, was admirable. They were totally gracious.”

On Fans Chanting His Name When He Unmasked:

“I think what it does is speaks to the respect that the lucha libre fans have for the performance side of what we do. To me, I almost felt like they were just saying thank you to me for the story and all this stuff, when really it should have been me thanking them for everything that they put into that, but it’s just a mutual respect kind of generated in that building that night. Part of it probably has to do with we saw what this guy’s willing to do. I was a bloody mess, the family’s there, and so you’d be hard-pressed not to at least have a little respect for somebody when they do that. I mean, we see it all the time in sports and stuff. A guy could be a jerk on interviews and stuff like that all the time, but when he goes out and he’s an absolute warrior at what he does, it shows you how much it matters to him. So at the end of the day, you might hate the guy, but the performer, the guy that’s doing his art, you can’t help but at least have a little respect for that.”