Bischoff: Vince McMahon Created Shorty G, Not Him

Eric Bischoff is pushing back on the idea that he was behind the creation of Chad Gable’s short-lived Shorty G persona, insisting the concept was all Vince McMahon.

The topic came up after Gable discussed the character’s origins on his own podcast, What Do You Wanna Talk About? Bischoff addressed it on a recent episode of 83 Weeks, making clear that while he played a role in shaping the presentation, the original idea was not his.

Bischoff said the character came together quickly, with serious discussions lasting only a matter of weeks. He explained that the concept was born out of one of his regular creative meetings with McMahon during his time as SmackDown Executive Director, recalling that McMahon arrived with a fully formed vision — and even some artwork already prepared — for what would become Shorty G.

From there, Bischoff said his job was to turn McMahon’s idea into something tangible, working with WWE’s marketing and art departments to develop logos, merchandise concepts, and the character’s overall look. He described a back-and-forth process of presenting options to McMahon, incorporating his notes, and refining the presentation until it was ready to debut.

Bischoff also noted that Gable himself was looped into the process once the character began taking shape, saying McMahon liked involving talent directly whenever it made sense creatively.

While Bischoff conceded that his fingerprints were on the final product simply because it happened under his watch as SmackDown’s lead, he was firm that the foundation of the gimmick belonged to McMahon rather than himself.

Shorty G debuted in late 2019 as a lighter, exaggerated version of Gable, but the character didn’t stick around long. WWE eventually scrapped the gimmick in favor of a more grounded portrayal of Gable, a shift that ultimately set the stage for his growth into one of the company’s more respected in-ring performers in the years that followed.

Character origin stories like this tend to resurface periodically as wrestlers and agents look back on their careers, and this one is a reminder of how much creative control McMahon exercised even over mid-card characters during that era. It’s also a small but telling example of how ideas moved through WWE’s old creative pipeline — from McMahon’s initial pitch, through agents like Bischoff, into the art and marketing departments, and finally back to talent for buy-in. Gable’s subsequent success as a straightforward, hard-nosed competitor makes Shorty G feel like even more of a footnote now, but the exchange between Bischoff and Gable shows there’s still plenty of interest in how these quirky WWE gimmicks actually came to be.