After weeks and weeks of anticipation, Chad Gable finally earned his chance to punch his ticket to WrestleMania 40 and, more importantly, his chance at revenge against Gunther, the “Ring General,” Intercontinental Champion, and the man who made his daughter cry during their fantastic championship match last fall on RAW.

On paper, the rules were simple: if Gable could best a group of six performers in a Gauntlet match, he'd be headed to South Philadelphia in singles action, guaranteed a chance to square up with the leader of Imperium one-on-one with a chance to change his wrestling future forever.

Unfortunately, it just wasn't meant to be.

Coming into the match last against an injured Sami Zayn, Gable tried to play it cordial with his fellow babyface, but in doing so, opened him up to a roll-up finish at the end of the broadcast, shaking his opponent's hand as he headed back to the Alpha Academy to presumably console a deeply hurt Maxxine Dupri, but not before he had a chance to talk about the move with Cathy Kelley for a special WWE Digital Exclusive segment.

“Coming up short, you hear that all the time. It's starting to become the story of my career, thus far, unfortunately, at least my singles career. Disappointing puts it lightly. More than anything, it's defeating, in a sense,” Chad Gable told Cathy Kelley. “For those who have never felt something like this, it's more visceral than you can really describe. It's not coming up short, it's letting people down that depend on you, in a number of ways. To me, this meant a lot more than WrestleMania or a championship. It was a very personal thing for me and my family and the ideals I guide my life by. I don't want to get melodramatic, but it's kind of true. A lot of the guiding forces in my life rode on this and me delivering on the things I say I'm going to do. That's always who I've been. This is an example of me not doing that. If you really boil it down, it kind of shatters your paradigm of who you are, at least who you thought you were. It goes pretty deep.”

After hyping himself up not just on RAW but in special video packages he produced himself at home, Gable now finds himself with no clear path to WrestleMania 40. Still, that doesn't mean Kelley couldn't do her best to ask, and fortunately, his responses were very interesting indeed.

Chad Gable is unsure about his WrestleMania 40 future.

At the end of his match against Sami Zayn, Chad Gable was pulled aside by the “Underdog from the Underground” for a few words before they went their separate ways. Asked what he said in that moment by Cathy Kelley, Gable didn't want to say, opting to instead keep it between the duo “for now.”

“No, for now that's going to stay between me and Sami. To be honest, I was less interested in what he had to say and more interested in getting out of the ring,” Chad Gable noted. “The dejected feeling is not something I like to air publicly, but at the same time, I'm a man willing enough to say he was the better man tonight. I don't think it meant more to him, I don't think it still means more to him than it does to me, but I have no problem showing respect to another man that got the better of me.”

Asked what he has planned next, Gable noted he wasn't sure, as for him, he put a lot of his eggs in this basket.

“I talked a lot over the past month or so how much this meant to me and this was my path. What am I going to do, come out tomorrow and say, ‘Give me one more chance!' and beg for one more chance? I'm not that guy,” Gable said. “I'm very realistic, very self-aware. You're not going to see me whining and complaining and trying to weasel my way into some form of shrapnel of a match at WrestleMania where I can say I was on the show. Where do I go from here? I don't know. I'm going to go home tomorrow and be aimless, lost, directionless, questioning myself, questioning my work ethic and dedication, if I've done it right, if I'm approaching everything right. This is a paradigm shift. What's next? I don't know. That's the hardest question you've asked so far. I have no clue.”

Fortunately for Gable, his chances of making it onto the WrestleMania 40 card aren't completely finished, as he could end up in the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championship Ladder match is a pretty safe bet for Alpha Academy. Still, that outcome is far less sweet than his glorious rematch with Gunther, as that could have been a match low on star power but incredibly high on grappling prowess.