Chad Gable will admit he did not enjoy watching someone else take over the character he built. He will also tell you that person did more with it than he could have.
Asked on What Do You Wanna Talk About whether he had anything to say about Ludwig Kaiser, who took on the El Grande Americano mask while Gable was out injured and has since become one of AAA’s biggest attractions, Gable led with the praise.
“Just what a magical thing he’s done.”
Then the honest part.
“I mean, I took umbrage with him taking this thing that I had created, I had built. But far be it for me to discredit anybody for taking it to a level that he did, because that is not something that’s easily done in this place.”
His point was about what most people do in that spot.
“You could be saddled with something like that and really put on a boo boo face and say I hate this, and I’ve seen it happen a million times, and he did the exact opposite and turned it into absolute gold.”
Why he did not resent the mask itself
Gable said his own experience of the character is the reason he understood what Kaiser had.
“I loved doing that. It was so fun from the moment I put the mask on. It’s like, this is something totally new, and that far into my career, being able to experience new things in a whole new wave of being a luchador, like that, I had never even considered. It was magic.”
“It’s like I was freed by that. I told people I was dancing on my entrances, which I don’t ever dance, and just having the mask itself on made me, it just freed me.”
He framed it as a way of looking at things rather than a piece of luck.
“If you look at everything as potential for growth, potential for success, there’s something in there you can take. Then the sky’s the limit. You just have to have those glasses on when you’re looking at stuff like that.”
Gable took on the El Grande Americano character in 2025 and lost it in a mask versus mask match against Kaiser’s version at AAA Noche de Los Grandes on May 30, unmasking afterwards. He has said he intends to return to AAA at some point.
