Chad Gable Explains the Origin Of El Grande Americano Character

Chad Gable recently explained how he created the El Grande Americano character as an attempt to take his story at the time to “another level.” Gable debuted the character in March of 2025 during his storyline after losing to Penta and going on a “quest” to discover the “dark ways of lucha libre.” He took on the Americano gimmick but suffered an injury just three months later. That led to a new El Grande Americano and a feud between the two when Gable returned, culminating in his losing a mask vs. mask match.

Gable has now repented his ways to the luchadores of WWE Raw, and won the WWE Intercontinental Championship at WWE SummerSlam. He spoke with Witty Whittier for a new interview in which he discussed the character’s origin and what he was hoping to accomplish with it. You can check out the highlights below (per Fightful):

On the Success of the Gimmick:

“Funny how this business works, wrestling itself, you never know what’s going to work out, what’s not going to work out, what’s going to surprise us, and what people are going to really latch on to. I think that’s been the story of the last year and a half or two years.

On Coming Up With the Idea:

“The El Grande Americano thing started just as me wanting to put more into a story that I was already involved with these luchadors, and I wanted to take it to another level. This was my idea of donning this mask and my way to try to elevate this story, not knowing where it was going to take me career-wise. You never really can predict stuff like that. Then on top of that, the injuries. For those that don’t know, I had a shoulder surgery, rotator cuff was torn, bicep tendon, all kinds of stuff that I had to have repaired, that forced me to go away.

“Again, it’s circumstantial. Who knows where we’d be right now if all of these elements had not just turned out the way they did. Somebody else took over the El Grande Americano gimmick, and they were doing it while I was hurt. I come back. Now we’ve got a built-in story there. It is like you said, a bit of an odyssey and a journey we had to go through. I would call it valleys and peaks and lows and things like that to get here. But now, where I’m at, it’s almost like, man, I couldn’t have written it any better than it turned out.”