Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez have both come around to the idea that Chad Gable might be the best wrestler in the world right now. JBL says he got there first, and he would put the Intercontinental Championship on him at SummerSlam.
Speaking on Something to Wrestle, where he is filling in as host, JBL said the recognition is overdue.
“I love the fact that everybody’s coming around to what I said the day after the show. I’ve thought Chad was the best wrestler in the world for some time, or at least one of them,” JBL said.
He said the thing that changed for Gable was not his ability but the setting, and he traced it to AAA.
“I know I was in one of the creative meetings, we were talking about Chad Gable, and Chad’s a fantastic athlete. He’s very smart. He’s a lot like Kurt Angle. These guys who can do comedy, do all this different stuff. He can do all that,” JBL said. “But the one thing we discussed was, look, it’s easy when you’re in the Alpha Academy or whatever the little gimmick skit thing he was in to get heat, as in, okay, we’re gonna do something campy and get booed. That’s pretty easy to do. As to go down to Mexico and get real heat, where people want to kill you when you’re coming out of the arena, that’s not even the same business. And Chad, when he came down there, he figured it out.”
JBL pinpointed the match where it clicked.
“I’ve told the story before. When he had the first match with LA Park, that was the first time I saw this guy has got it figured out. He worked a heel match where he worked the leg, worked the leg, worked the leg, and finally goes over. It was a fantastic match, one of the best I’d ever seen him work,” JBL said. “Then he comes back and he’s the maestro for this mask versus mask match, which I thought was just absolutely fantastic. You look at Chad just orchestrating every single thing around him. It’s unbelievable. It’s incredible what he’s doing.”
Gable has credited The Undertaker with getting through to him about overthinking. JBL agrees, up to a point.
“Yeah, I think Undertaker is a big part of that. And so is Jeremy Borash, realizing what you need to tell him to let him do it. But he still has to do it,” JBL said. “Undertaker could have told 100 different wrestlers the same thing. Ninety-nine of them couldn’t have done what Chad Gable did. It takes the two of those guys to be able to do that.”
The comparison JBL keeps coming back to is Steve Austin, and specifically the period right after Austin 3:16, when WWE had a hit on its hands and no plan for it.
“It’s the same thing that happened with Stone Cold. All of a sudden he does this Austin 3:16. They weren’t planning on using him that much. They didn’t have something for him. He was kind of a fill in to get in there, and the story’s been told many times. They’re punishing Triple H, and all of a sudden Austin gets put in that spot,” JBL said. “You have this incredible promo that’s cut on the fly, because Michael Hayes had buzzed him saying, hey, Jake Roberts just cut a religious promo on you. And all of a sudden Steve goes out there and cuts this promo, and now you got this really hot commodity. We didn’t have plans for it, so it takes a while to figure out. Okay, wait a minute, we got to figure out what to do, and you don’t want to take a misstep.”
He said the same caution applies now.
“You don’t want to put, like say Stone Cold back in the day, something out there and douse the fire that’s starting to burn. Same thing with Chad. All of a sudden they end up with this freaking commodity that’s just unbelievable,” JBL said. “You don’t want to misstep. You don’t want to put him out there and do something that kills that fire. You want to do something that’ll build it. So I think they’ll figure it out. They’ve got an unbelievable commodity here, and they figured it out with Steve. Steve all of a sudden becomes this guy that any building in the world you put his name on, he sold it out. Does Chad get to that level? Look, I have no idea. There are only about one or two people in history of the business have gotten to that level. But are they going to find something for him? Sometimes it takes a while when a gift is thrown into your lap to figure out what to do with it.”
Gable challenges Penta for the Intercontinental Championship at SummerSlam. Asked whether it is time to pull the trigger, JBL did not hesitate, though he offered a caveat about booking with your heart.
“If that’s where you’re going with him, yeah, I’d put the title on him. Not any doubt in my mind, unless they have some idea of where they want to go with him next,” JBL said. “Sometimes the route to get there is not, you got to be careful not to book like a fan. I always say, if you want to kill a territory, let the fans book it, because they just put the good guys over.”
His read is that this is the moment anyway.
“I don’t know if this is the spot. To me, it feels like the spot where you put Chad Gable over and start this big nice run with him. He is such an incredible worker, and guys like this only come along once or twice a generation,” JBL said. “Chad’s figured it out. Maybe that run down in Mexico with Undertaker is what got him to that next level. I don’t know, but he’s there, and you got to figure out now what to do with him.”
As for Penta, who has held the title since March, JBL sees the top of the card.
“I think the world title picture is probably where he would head. He’s so popular right now. Everybody dressing like him, the people doing all his symbols and all the things that he does. Penta is incredibly over,” JBL said.
He pushed back on the idea that the Intercontinental Championship is simply a workers’ belt.
“The Intercontinental title at times was the working man’s title, but it was also at times a main event title. You would run, when you’re running two shows a night, you’d have the Intercontinental Champion on one show, you’d have the World Championship on the other show,” JBL said. “So it all depends who holds it and the storyline that gets you to it. Sometimes it’s an absolute featured title as much as the world title, and sometimes it’s kind of a throwaway, where you don’t really pay attention to it. So it all depends on who has it and the storyline that got them there.”
