Chad Gable asked for Rey Mysterio as his first televised Intercontinental Championship challenger, beat him on Raw, and then wrote a tribute to him that has almost nothing to do with the match.
Gable retained on Monday night at the KeyBank Center in Buffalo, reversing a Mysterio pinning attempt into a victory roll after a match built around his ankle lock and Mysterio’s repeated escapes from it. Mysterio hit the 619 more than once and went to the top rope for the frog splash, only for Gable to get the knees up and reapply the hold.
There was a moment midway through where Mysterio tweaked his knee coming out of a hold and Gable stopped, waiting until Mysterio told him he was fine. The two had also shaken hands after their opening exchange.
The moment that has traveled came after the bell. Gable reached to embrace Mysterio with one arm while both men were still on the mat. Once they were up, Mysterio asked for the title so that he could fasten it around Gable’s waist himself. They shook hands, embraced again, and Gable raised his hand.
He wrote about it on Instagram afterwards.
“Last night I had the honor of defending the Intercontinental Championship against one of the greatest Professional Wrestlers of all time.”
“But what’s more astonishing to me than Rey’s continued ability to perform at the level he did last night at this point in his career is the fact that a guy with his list of accomplishments in this business can be as genuinely humble, gracious, and grounded as he is.”
“Rey Mysterio is truly a human being like no other I’ve ever met. All class.”
“Our encounter was, and is, everything I love about Pro Wrestling. I felt alive. Thank you, Rey.”
The match happened because Gable went and asked for it. On the August 10 Raw he praised Mysterio’s work running AAA and the tournament being staged there, and said it would be his honor to defend against him. Mysterio answered that he had gas left in the tank and accepted. It was Mysterio’s first televised match since losing to Ethan Page on July 27.
Gable spent much of this year under the El Grande Americano mask, a character built on disrespecting luchadores, and has been open since about wanting to make good on it. Asking for Mysterio, then handing him the closing segment of Raw, is the clearest version of that so far.
Gable won the title from Penta on night two of SummerSlam on August 2, in his home state, with his family joining him in the ring afterwards. It is the first singles championship of his WWE career, twelve years in. He had already defended it once, beating Ethan Page at a live event on August 6, but this was the first defense on television.
The arc that got him there has been picked over repeatedly this month by people who were part of it. Eric Bischoff said the Shorty G repackaging in 2019 came from Vince McMahon rather than from him, and that his own job was to develop the idea and take it to marketing. Gable himself has said the shoulder injury that cost him the El Grande Americano mask is the reason any of it worked out, and that none of it would have played the same way had he stayed healthy.
AJ Styles put the two together on his podcast, arguing that everything Gable was handed and stuck with is why the SummerSlam win landed.
“He made it work, dude. He did. Everything that happened to him was for a reason. The Shorty G, the Grande Americano, all these things that built,” Styles said. “And everything built to this moment. And it was a great moment.”
Mysterio is 51 and has been wrestling professionally since 1989. He is a WWE Hall of Famer, a former world champion, and now works as General Manager of AAA following WWE’s acquisition of the promotion, a role that has put him at the center of the tournament to find Roman Reigns’ next challenger. Two first-round matches from that tournament also took place on Monday’s show, with Dragon Lee beating El Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr. and AAA Cruiserweight Champion Rey Fenix beating El Fiscal. The two winners meet in the semifinals.
Gable’s next defense has not been announced.
