Chad Gable on El Grande Americano Character Being His Idea

As noted before, this past May’s AAA Noche de Los Grandes 2026 event in Monterrey, Mexico featured El Grande Americano defeating Original El Grande Americano in a Mask vs. Mask match and Chad Gable unmasking himself after he lost the match. This match was notable for Gable turning face during his post-match speech leading to his return as a face star for WWE’s RAW brand and his winning the WWE Intercontinental Championship from Penta at SummerSlam 2026 earlier this month in his hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

WittyWhittier held a recent interview with Gable. One of the topics discussed included Gable’s thoughts about the El Grande Americano character in WWE and Lucha Libre AAA being his idea.

“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. 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.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com