10 WWE Gimmicks That Overstayed Their Welcome
7. American Beta
Shorty G (August 2019-October 2020)
And so comes the entry that inspired this list.
You'd never guess from the thumbnail, but Charles Betts, aka Chad Gable, is an amateur wrestler who qualified for the 2012 London Olympics in Greco-Roman wrestling. In professional wrestling, he's also experienced success, cinching doubles titles with both Bobby Roode and more notably Jason Jordan as the wildly popular American Alpha. He's one of only six that can claim tag reigns on RAW, Smackdown AND NXT (For completionists, Jordan, The Revival, and The Street Profits are the other five).
Despite this, the last 14 months have been frustrating for Gable and fans alike. During the King of the Ring Tournament in summer 2019, 6-foot-8 Baron Corbin, surely an onscreen mouthpiece for Vince McMahon himself, voiced his incredulity that someone like 5-foot-8 Chad Gable thought he belonged in his league. Corbin met Gable in the finals and shock of shocks, tall guy defeated small guy and "King" Corbin dubbed him Shorty Gable by "royal decree".
What followed was a full year of exhaustive short jokes. Gable embraced the role of "inspirational underdog" who raided the wardrobe department on the set of Space Jam 2 and shortened his moniker even further, infuriatingly, to Shorty G. Sub-five minute squash matches followed on a near weekly basis until the 23 October 2020 SmackDown, when someone FINALLY realized this wasn't working and pulled the plug, letting him resume life again as Olympian Chad Gable. Let's hope he's able to return to form.