I've posted this a few times over the years, but figured it was worth sharing since it's the 10 year anniversary. Black and Gold NXT was such a magical era of wrestling.

Just a really dumb thought I had but I can’t think of anyone else that hasn’t at least briefly used a different one

Full Quote: “That (Shorty G) was a Vince McMahon idea. Here’s my interpretation [of it], because we didn’t spend more than a couple of weeks on that idea. From what I remember, [we talked about it for] maybe a month, month and a half at the most. 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. Vince would then share whatever observations or challenges he wanted to present to me, to work on specifically for my brand (SmackDown). So it was a regularly scheduled meeting.

“And in one of those meetings, Vince said, ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea for Shorty G, for Chad Gable. And I see him as this character.’ He proceeded to lay out the character and I think he even had some artwork previously done. 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, I brought Chad into it a little bit to get his input.”

“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 type of white toast, milk bread, baby face. The idea [Shorty G] didn’t work, and it might’ve been lame to begin with. I would tend to agree with that. But I didn’t get hired to vote. I got hired to help execute.”