There was a time when it looked like Gable Steveson was going to be the next big thing in WWE.

A dominant collegiate wrestler at the University of Minnesota, the very same school where Brock Lesnar, Shelton Benjamin, and his own brother Bobby – aka NXT‘s Damian Kemp – all attended, Steveson was drafted onto RAW without so much as wrestling a single match in NXT back in 2021, celebrated at WrestleMania 38 as the next great WWE Olympic Hero, and even took some shots at Chad Gable for his name, despite the fact that the grappler formerly known as Shorty G uses his birth name in the squared circle.

And then… nothing.

Okay, technically, it hasn't been nothing nothing, as Gable did appear on an episode of RAW to help celebrate Kurt Angle's birthday and even sprayed his arch-rival with a milk cannon, but other than that, his record remains a perfect 0-0, and he appears no closer to making his full-time WWE debut than he did two years ago.

… or is he? Sitting down for an interview with Cliff Brunt of the AP to discuss his balancing his Olympic aspiration with his WWE future, Steveson said he's still working hard to get where he needs to be in The Fed, with his debut potentially coming a whole lot sooner than some may expect.

“I am still doing my thing,” Steveson said. “I have changed my diet, my body appearance. I wanted to be the best thing ever so when I did go on TV, it was going to be a sight that nobody has seen before. My time is coming and it’s coming sooner than a lot of people think.”

“He’ll do great, and he’ll be a star there, no question about it,” Steveson's Minnesota coach Brandon Eggum added. “But I also knew that leaving the world of competing and going out and showing the people what he’s capable of doing on the mat, that would be something that wouldn’t be very easy for him as well. So when the opportunity came back … I guess I wasn’t super surprised by that.”

Is WWE happy to see Steveson back in a singlet preparing for the summer Olympics in 2024? Maybe yes, maybe no, but as the promotion learned with Angle some two decades ago, Olympic gold medalists who can main event Premium Live Events as a babyface hero don't exactly grow on trees; if a performer like Steveson is interested in swapping out Greco-Roman wrestling for Sports Entertainment at some point in the future, it's alright to play the long game.

Gable Steveson is fired up to take another shot at Olympic gold.

Elsewhere in his interview with Brunt, Steveson discussed why he returned to the Greco-Roman mat instead of retiring once and for all for WWE, noting that his fire to compete will never go away.

“The itch and fire will never go away. And I feel like if you ask any competitor, old or young, I think it’s always there. But some people just don’t have the bodies to do it because they’re a little older. But I think me just turning 23, I still had that extra fire, and I want to see what I could do. I wanted to test my limits. And so I stayed ready just in case the time came where I could come back,” Steveson said.

“I need to have that Paris experience in front of a packed house,” he said. “I need to have them see what it’s like to see Gable Steveson in person. Having been in Tokyo and having no fans was — it was okay because I still won an Olympic gold. But I want to have that experience of having my family in the front row. They need to see it live.”

Will Steveson be able to overcome the odds, piledrive the competition, and become the rare Olympic wrestler who scores gold two games in a row, an accomplishment that even Angle was unable to match? Or will Steveson learn that his best days in that particular sport are behind him and that he's better off embracing his future in Sports Entertainment, where he has an inside track to becoming a near-instant star and United States Championship favorite? Either way, Steveson believes he's operating at the peak of his physical abilities, and as a result, he's going to give it his best shot.

“I think body maturity is coming into play,” Steveson said. “And I think now it’s at a stage where I have seen my true physical strength and my true physical attributes, and everything is coming to light. I think now that this is a different person again, with things that people have not seen.”