Chad Gable is off the board and will stay with WWE after inking a new deal with the company.
After his deal expired last month, Gable received what was reported to be an excellent offer by WWE. Although key people in AEW were pushing him to Tony Khan, AEW didn’t get a chance to make him an offer. While speaking with The Gorilla Position, Gable confirmed he had signed a new deal ahead of Clash at the Castle.
At the event, he put over Intercontinental Champion Sami Zayn. Since then, Wyatt Sicks has targeted Gable. This Saturday at Money in the Bank, the men’s ladder match will be made up of Jey Uso vs. Andrade vs. Carmelo Hayes vs. Gable vs. LA Knight vs. Drew McIntyre.
While speaking on Cheap Heat with Peter Rosenberg, Gable explained his decision to re-sign.
Gable said, “I’ve done some reflection. I’ve done some reflecting about what (re-signing) means for me, not just professionally or financially going forward, but what I want it to mean to me, and as you said, I’m getting older. This business is interesting. If you would have told me in high school when I started this that I’d be hitting my peak when I was 38, I would have said you’re crazy. How do you wrestle that long? But here we are. So I think when I’ve kind of evaluated what I want my legacy to be, or part of my legacy anyway, to be going forward, I want to step into more of a leadership role going forward, both locker room-wise, you know, and just to the guys, like, we’ve got a lot of young talent coming up with guys from NXT. And we got guys like the Creeds, who are just these incredible athletes. Everybody’s seen their athleticism, but they don’t necessarily have, like, they haven’t got the guiding light for them to show them like the other stuff, the other aspect. No one needs to teach them how to be strong and athletic anymore. They’ve got that. I couldn’t even teach them that. But I think I am the type of guy that would be good in a leadership role. And I think I would have a lot of value, especially to the people that, you know, WWE and both NXT seem to be really interested in lately, which is a lot of people with sporting backgrounds, making that jump from amateur athletics, and with the NIL deals and all that stuff. So I think there’s a big chance for me there to be stepping into a nice leadership role and offer some insight to those guys, or whatever I can.”
Gable confirmed that he had previously signed a five-year deal around 2019 before talking about the timing of his new deal.
Gable said, “The timing is unbelievable. Like, I’ve reflected on it so much. It’s just unbelievable, but sometimes, I mean, these are the kinds of things I think when they happen like this, that you make you question, like, there’s something to this, like, someone was looking out for me or fate or something. Because the stars just aligned, right? It was just too perfect. And I’m just so happy it is because it’s great. This is where I want to be. I’m like a loyal guy, right. So I start somewhere, and I want to finish there. If I start something, anything, I want to finish it. And I just so happy and fortunate that the idea of finishing it now looks different than it would have [been] a few years ago, which would have been just like, you know, fulfilling my contract would have been finished, like finishing it because I wasn’t really doing anything. Now, finishing it means accomplishing things, winning championships, and then leaving a real legacy. You know, and to me, that’s the most important thing. And I think that the biggest ups are that what led to this the most was just my, whatever it was, my wife, my family, everybody being able to talk me through everything, my ability to stick it out through just the lowest of lows, because there’s, I mean, I was never gonna walk away. I never thought about, you know, you hear guys asking for their release and things like that. I’m not one of those guys. But to be able to have to just keep your eye on the end of the tunnel and see everything through really got me to that point. So now, I guess, like you said, you reap the benefits of getting through that stuff.”
Gable added that while everyone had the conclusion he would go somewhere else should he have left WWE, he always liked the idea of drifting off from wrestling and doing his own thing as he has a master’s degree and is interested in filmmaking. Gable will wrestle Jey Uso next week on Monday’s episode of Raw. Check out the interview here:
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit Cheap Heat with an h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.