Shawn Michaels Details How Gable Steveson's WWE In-Ring Debut Came Together

After years of anticipation, Gable Steveson will finally make his long-awaited WWE in-ring debut, with the Olympic gold medallist set to wrestle at NXT’s upcoming Great American Bash on July 30 against Baron Corbin.

Steveson was originally signed to a WWE deal in August 2021, and according to NXT head Shawn Michaels on a pre-GAB media call, it was he who got the ball rolling on Steveson’s in-ring debut:

"He’s been here in the WWE for a while. He’s been down here training for a bit. I will be straight forward and honest, he had been here and I wanted to know, ‘Hey, I want to do something with this guy. I want to get him into the mix. Can I do that?’ There are sometimes, some people fall into different genres, different rules. I don’t ask a lot of questions, to be perfectly honest, but he is someone that I felt like, ‘if we’re going to do something with him, let’s do it.’ Perhaps, it was something that slid off someone’s desk, so I brought it up, and I got the go ahead. Maybe a little abrupt, but I wanted to throw him into the deep end and let’s see how this is going to go. There is only one way that people learn how to do this stuff, and that’s by getting in the ring and doing it nigh after night, week after week, month after month.

“He’s an incredibly talented, intelligent, young man, so let’s start getting him to work. Following in the footsteps of somebody like Kurt Angle, I want to get to there right away and see if I can become as good as Kurt was or perhaps surpass him. That was a trigger I wanted to know if I could pull, and I got the green light, so I’m doing it. We’re very excited about what we can bring to the table in NXT. He’s going to be out there with a veteran in Baron Corbin. Baron, absolutely, is not going to make it easy on him. He is, literally, a shark who smells blood. Gable has had a lot of big moments, so I don’t think the moment is going to be bigger than him. We will see how he adjusts because this isn’t what he’s done before. He doesn’t seem to be intimidated by the challenge,” revealed Michaels.

H/T: Fightful

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