Eric Bischoff Details His Involvement With Chad Gable’s ‘Shorty G’ Character

Details about the creation of Shorty G.

Cody Rhodes welcomed Chad Gable onto his ‘What Do You Wanna Talk About?’ podcast, and as the chat went on, Gable touched on the ‘Shorty G’ character he had to take on in WWE. Gable has been open about that being a low point in his career.

When asked about who created the character, Gable said he assumes it was Eric Bischoff because that’s who presented it to him. Bischoff was serving as the Executive Director of SmackDown at the time.

On his 83 Weeks show, Bischoff addressed Gable’s comments. He said he was involved, but it was a Vince McMahon idea.

“That was a Vince McMahon idea,” Bischoff clarified where the Shorty G idea came from. “Here’s my interpretation, because we didn’t spend more than a couple of 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 bringing ‘em to Vince and 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. ‘I see him as this character’ and he proceeded to lay out the character and I think he even had some artwork previously done. Not 100 percent if that’s the case, but I immediately went to (the) marketing department because if you’re gonna create a brand, you take the — what I would do — take the basic idea, go to marketing, describe to them the personality, the character in as much detail as you can. Our 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, merchandise design, that type of thing. Logos, brands, etcetera. 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 Chad into it a little bit and to get his input. Vince liked that. Vince liked the talent engaging and being part of the process… I agreed with that as well.” Bischoff continued, “Were my fingerprints on it? Of course. It was my show. But it was really a Vince McMahon idea.” He added, “More than a messenger. I mean, I took the idea and developed it. So, like I said, my fingerprints were definitely on it. It’s just that wasn’t my original idea. I didn’t look at Chad Gable and go, oh, I see him as this underdog, collegiate, almost Bob Backlund-ish type of white toast, milk bread babyface. I didn’t see that. I’m not saying that’s what Vince saw. That’s my interpretation based on some of the conversation he had with me when he shared the idea with me initially. That’s kind of what I think Vince saw in Chad. It’s to lean into his collegiate, athletic background. It’s not like it doesn’t make sense. Obviously, the idea didn’t work and it might’ve been lame to begin with — it’s a subjective thing — I would tend to agree with that by the way. But, I didn’t get hired to vote. I got hired to help execute, so, there you go.”

At the 2026 SummerSlam Premium Live Event, Gable captured the WWE Intercontinental Championship by submitting Penta.

If the quote in this article is used, please credit 83 Weeks with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.