Eric Bischoff sets the record straight about the creation of Chad Gable’s Shorty G character
During the What Do You Wanna Talk About? podcast, Chad Gable stated that former WWE Executive Director Eric Bischoff was possibly to blame for the Shorty G gimmick. While speaking on his 83 Weeks podcast, Bischoff set the record straight about the character’s creation…
“That was a Vince McMahon idea. Here’s my interpretation because we didn’t spend more than a couple weeks on that idea, from what I remember, maybe a month, month and a half at the most, any serious conversation.
I had weekly meetings with Vince, and there was no specific agenda for those meetings other than to bring any issues that I had with creative or ideas or suggestions and bring them to Vince. Vince would then, I guess, share whatever observations or challenges he wanted to present to me to work on specifically for my brand.
So it was a regularly scheduled meeting, and in one of those meetings, Vince said, ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea for Shorty G or for Chad Gable, and I see him as this character.’ And he proceeded to lay out the character, and I think he even had some artwork previously done. I’m not 100% if that’s the case, but I immediately went to the marketing department because if you’re going to create a brand, you take the basic idea, go to marketing, describe to them the personality, the character in as much detail as you can.
The art department goes to work. They come back with two or three ideas. They would come back with those ideas, I’d kind of filter through them—the visuals, you know, merchandise design, that type of thing, logos, brands, etc. I’d filter through the ones that I thought probably would be the most appropriate based on our previous discussion, bring them to Vince. We’d kind of go through them, filter through them. I’d take his notes, go back to marketing.
So that process went back and forth for a couple of weeks. And I think one of the steps that I took once we started narrowing down some of the ideas, again, Vince’s idea, I’m there to execute based on my interpretation of his vision as it was brought to me.
I brought Chad into it a little bit to get his input, you know, and Vince liked that. Vince liked the talent, you know, engaging and being part of the process. So I obviously agreed with that as well. And I engaged Chad a little bit, and I don’t recall why. In fact, I think they probably walked away from the Shorty G gimmick shortly after I left. I don’t remember hearing about it.
Were my fingerprints on it? Of course. It was my show. But it was really a Vince McMahon idea.”