Chad Gable On When He and Jason Jordan ‘Clicked’ as a Team, How Their Competitive Nature Helped Them

Chad Gable looked back on his tag team with Jason Jordan and when it felt like they really came together during his appearance on After the Bell with Corey Graves. Gable and Jordan became a team as American Alpha in NXT, sticking together as a team during their call-up to the main roster and winning both the NXT and Smackdown Tag Team Championships. Gable talked about when they finally found their groove as a team as characters and how their competitive nature helped them. You can check out highlights and the full audio below:

On when his pairing with Jason Jordan ‘clicked’: “I think as far as the promos and character stuff go, we did a promo once, Jason Jordan and I, when they first started pairing us together and playing with the dynamic. And we did one promo where I kind of played almost like this little brother. And I was kinda bothering him, and picking on him, and being a little goof. But he kinda like gave in to it. And it felt so right, and people were — you could feel people were with it, and they were laughing. And I gave the final ‘Ready, willing and Gable’ line at the end of this one, out of nowhere. And all of a sudden everybody just lit up. And the way I did it, and the way Jason responded was just perfect. And I looked when we got done and I’m like, ‘This is it, this going to work.’ Like, ‘This partnership is right,’ it felt right to me.”

On their competitive nature helping them as a team: “He makes everything look so easy, but he was struggling. And a lot of people go through that. He went through, I think the same thing I did initially, where I feel like he had some trouble allowing himself to be vulnerable. And opening up in the kind of way we need to with what we do. So here’s what I think happened was, they paired us together to see if it would work — what the dynamic would be like. And we are both very competitive in the sense of, we came from amateur wrestling, similar backgrounds. And I think he was initially, if you ask me, almost a little bit bothered by the fact that they think, ‘Oh this new guy, they’re going to put this new guy with me and all of a sudden they think it’s going to work?’ And it forced him to raise his level, raise his game up a little bit and open up.

“And then it forced me to say, ‘Well, I’m not gonna let him all of a sudden get way better than he was just because I’m paired with him.’ So I raised my level. And we were competitive with each other to point of, ‘Man, this is working.’ Like, our friendship was built out of that competitiveness. And before you know it, we were best friends, like after like six months. Because we recognized that. We recognized that our mindsets were the same, we came from the same background, we have the same drive. And so the competitiveness kind of went away when we realized, ‘We can do this. It’s gonna work, we can force it to work, we can make it work.’ Before you know it, we were just clicking, man. Like, everything we did, we were on the same page, we would finish each other’s thoughts. So it was definitely meant to be, 100%.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit WWE’s After the Bell with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.