Please explain Drew McIntyre to me.

[The Thread Killer]

So I have been watching NXT pretty faithfully over the past few months, and this was actually my first exposure to Drew McIntyre. I was not watching WWE from 2009 - 2014 when he was previously there, although I think I may have seen him as part of 3MB. I did not see him in TNA, because I'd rather smash myself across the bridge of the nose with a hammer than watch TNA.

 

So here is what I've seen from Drew McIntyre so far...

• He's big
• He's in good shape
• He is at least passable in the ring (this is where I am not 100% sure if I am getting the full picture)
• He can cut a decent promo
• He's marketable. By that I mean, he's tall, good looking, and combining that with his Scottish accent, I am sure he is quite popular with the ladies, while not being seen as purely a pretty boy to the men. He would look great on a poster. Hell, just watching him cut a promo in the ring, I find myself questioning my own personal preferences and I get a strange stirring in my area...

 

Perhaps I've said too much.

 

Anyhow, WWE seems to be getting behind McIntyre to a degree, since they are giving him the NXT title shot at Takeover Brooklyn III. So what I don't understand, and what I am hoping some of you will explain to me, or share your opinions about, is what went wrong with his first run?

 

Was his ring work lousy? Were his promos too weak? How the hell did he end up in 3MB? Did WWE drop the ball, only now they realize it, or is he not all that good? Did they only bring him back because TNA made him World Champion, or do they actually think they made or mistake? Did he just need some time out of the WWE system to get some seasoning and improve, or was the mistake on WWE's part in letting him go in the first place? Did he just badly need a reboot?

 

This guy seems to check every box and has a huge upside and a ton of potential, so I'm just very curious what went wrong with his initial run with WWE and am curious to get your opinions on who dropped the ball, him or WWE, or did he just need some time away?

 

Opinions, please.

[C.S.]

This explains why he supposedly fell out of favor before:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1018476-wwe-drew-mcintyre-is-too-talented-to-be-punished-for-his-choice-in-ex-wife

 

Long story short: there was a domestic incident with his wife at the time (Taryn Terrell, AKA Tiffany) where she was the aggressor, which is apparently a big no-no in the machismo-oozing world of the WWE.

[fakeplastictrees]

Which is so weird.

 

Beat your wife: lose your job

 

Get beaten by your wife: get de-pushed, fall out of favor, and eventually lose your job

 

WWE logic hurts my head.

[Victator]

Getting attacked by your wife is a no win scenario.

There was a scene in Goodfellas where Henry Hill comes home late and his mother in law is screaming at him. Henry turns around and leaves without saying a word. Which is probably the best way to handle most arguments.

[Jimmy Redman]

The Tiffany stuff didn't kill his initial push, which was already dead by late 2010, so much as it made Vince never want to try pushing him again, and I think if it didn't happen they would have definitely tried pushing him again in the future (since they did have high hopes for him and he was only young).

 

His first push ended when he really didn't have the charisma or connection to back it up, and he was stuck at IC/Tag title level until he ended up in the doghouse and became the C Show champ.

 

Ironically the exact moment they closed the door on pushing him was the moment he got really fucking good working C shows and probably deserved another push, at least a push out of the doghouse, but all he got was 3MB.

 

He seems to have benefited a lot from his time outside the company. He has more charisma, is even more physical, and has a presence that he always lacked before. He carries himself like 'The Chosen One' should have carried himself in 2010.

 

Excuse the cheap plug, but on the latest Bogus Journey we looked at some Drew Mac matches and discussed basically all of this stuff in more detail.

[TonyPulis'Cap]

Drew was very much a case of a guy that getting let go by WWE was the making of him. Getting to work in Evolve, back in Scotland and across the UK and even TNA, where he was more physically imposing than a lot of the people he came up against allowed him to turn into a much more dynamic and aggressive wrestler rather than the more punch/kick/resthold bland style that he had when he first came in as the 'Chosen one'. It also enabled him to build his character and his promos and he shows far more charisma now than when he was initially pushed.

 

He did lots of great work over here in the UK before he was resigned and developed into a guy you could trust to put your main title on and build around. What Culture wrestling can be very much hit and miss, but this promo that he cut against a guy called Joseph Connors (who has been in WWE UK) is really great:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H5ZrTDc7Pk

[KB8]

I'm still annoyed with myself that I never went to see him when he was up here. My friend was at the ICW show in 2014 when he made his comeback and the whole thing looked pretty tremendous.

[Mad Dog]

Which is so weird.

 

Beat your wife: lose your job

 

Get beaten by your wife: get de-pushed, fall out of favor, and eventually lose your job

 

WWE logic hurts my head.

A hockey team made a player apologize to the team for being a distraction for being abused by his wife or girlfriend.

[goc]

People are all mad about Cena "killing" The Nexus but the real casualty out of that whole thing was Drew McIntyre because when The Nexus attacked Vince and took him off of TV that killed Drew's "Chosen One" push on Smackdown and he never recovered.

[Childs]

Drew really suffered from being Vince's favorite toy before he had the chops to back it up. He'd have been better off flying under the radar early. He was actually quite good in-ring before they released him the first time (I always think of that Chris Masters match on Superstars), though it's fair to say he blossomed as a complete package on the indies.

 

When you see him in person, it comes across how massive he truly is. Not just tall but thick, even though he's not absurdly musclebound. A lot of the EVOLVE guys looked like middle schoolers next to him.

[jcmmnx]

Yeah it was probably a case of too much too soon, but he looks like he could handle a big push with ease. He really carries himself like a star now. Killian Dane is getting pushed as a monster in NXT, and Drew towered over him. I'd love to see him in the mix on SDL especially on the heel side where they have Jinder and Corbin on top.

[KawadaSmile]

I didn't follow much of his work in the indies/TNA, but looking at his participation at the 2011 Elimination Chamber match, albeit short, he carried himself like a big fucking deal, and that carried over in his current stint in NXT, to the point where he feels way too big of a star to be there.

[joeg]

I think what went wrong with his first WWE run is that he was so young and so green. He was 22 or 23, green as goose shit and getting the biggest push for somebody that age since Randy Orton. As talented as he was/is, he just wasn't ready or as good then as he is now. I think the domestic incident was more of a symptom of what caused his push to fall apart then the cause of it. There have been podcast where people talked about how he just wasn't ready for the push was given and I think that's the case.

[supremebve]

I think what went wrong with his first WWE run is that he was so young and so green. He was 22 or 23, green as goose shit and getting the biggest push for somebody that age since Randy Orton. As talented as he was/is, he just wasn't ready or as good then as he is now. I think the domestic incident was more of a symptom of what caused his push to fall apart then the cause of it. There have been podcast where people talked about how he just wasn't ready for the push was given and I think that's the case.

Is there a more WWE thing than pushing a guy who is clearly not ready, and blaming him for not succeeding instead of blaming themselves for putting him in a position to fail?

[Shatter_Machine]

 

I think what went wrong with his first WWE run is that he was so young and so green. He was 22 or 23, green as goose shit and getting the biggest push for somebody that age since Randy Orton. As talented as he was/is, he just wasn't ready or as good then as he is now. I think the domestic incident was more of a symptom of what caused his push to fall apart then the cause of it. There have been podcast where people talked about how he just wasn't ready for the push was given and I think that's the case.

Is there a more WWE thing than pushing a guy who is clearly not ready, and blaming him for not succeeding instead of blaming themselves for putting him in a position to fail?

 

They really must have wanted him to be a big thing for a long time, or thought he could learn on the job in the mid-card, because, honestly, how many guys are ready at that age? I know that Orton had the emotional maturity of a 13-year-old when he first showed up. Who else started that young and succeeded?

[JNLister]

You might be interested in an interview I did with Drew a couple of years back for FSM:

 

 

 

What were the key things you learned in OVW that you hadn't learned in your UK training?

 

I was actually only in OVW for about two weeks before I appeared on television, when I was 22, so I had a bit of a crash course in American wrestling and what's required to be on TV. Wade Barrett was brought out only three weeks after me and by the time he got there I was already on TV! I had to learn on the road rather than in OVW and it turns out the cameras are very important. Having thousands and thousand of people in the arena, that's pretty crazy to begin, but the reality was there were millions of people watching and home and I had to quickly learn to maximise my face time on camera to try to get over.

 

How did you adjust to switching back and forth between TV and house shows?

 

What I found the best way to do it is pretty much treat the house shows like you would treat TV. Don't half ass anything: you have moments you mess around a bit for your own entertainment or the boys in the back's entertainment, but at that point I wasn't trying to pop the boys or pop myself. Generally the camera was always on the same side, so I would find myself practising playing to that side, even on house shows. I'd say when you start, you're on the job 100% every night until you learn to differentiate [TV and house shows].

 

What did you learn working on the road with WWE that you didn't or couldn't learn in a training school?

 

Working with guys with that level of experience, you can't possibly learn the same by working in the UK. Taking your time at the right moments was one thing. Not doing things like they'd do in Britain, and I did it myself, of just randomly raising your hands as a bad guy during matches at the wrong moment, or the good guys being happy just slapping hands, trying to get the crowd clapping and stuff before the match starts, trying to get them chanting "we want more" when they haven't actually seen anything yet!

 

I found in America that rather than going out and begging for [a reaction], you wrestle and tell a good story and be aggressive. There's nothing more rewarding than when you earn the reaction rather than beg for it. You learn the right time to slow it down, the right time to play to the crowd but not overly play to the crowd. With a simple head movement you can get as much reaction as waving your hands like I did back in the day.

 

What did you learn from specific wrestlers on the roster?

 

The Undertaker taught me not to play wrestler. When you're younger you go out and you try to remember a bunch of moves rather than conveying with your facial reactions, which are so important. With all the cameras around, I didn't understand for a couple of years that rather than be a wrestler I was playing a wrestler. Once you learn to relax, you learn to tell the story with your face and you do the moves: you can have it all together. That's when you're feeling it, you're feeling it, you're being a wrestler.

 

 

Ricky Steamboat taught me to relax. He and I went about 30 to 40 minutes on house shows every single time. I think myself and Jericho had the most matches with him that he'd had in the past 20 years at the time, which is pretty insane as I was 22 at the time. He called it all and then after a couple of matches he started letting me call matches. It was just crazy considering he retired when I was nine years old. I was learning the right time to do things, but the biggest thing was just relaxing. You'll never truly enjoy being a professional wrestler unless you learn to relax. You'll just be tense all the time, thinking about the next spot, things that don't matter. The only thing that matters is emotion, and the only way you can learn that is to relax. Once you learn to relax, there's nowhere better than being in the ring.

 

Finlay taught me to think outside the box, while thinking on the fly, making yourself different from everyone else. For example, when I was doing the 'Chosen One' run, I was trying to think of something different moves-wise. Characte-wise, that's all [Vince's] idea, so in ring what can I do to be different? Finlay and I had worked together for about three months, and I said I'd like to do something using the ring to be different. Him and I used to go to the ring every week before TV and start trying to come up with things that had never been done before. My gimmick became "Drew uses the ring like a tag team partner." One of my favourite ones that Finlay came up with was when we were stood outside and I was trying to work out how I can use the frame of the ring. He said "Why don't you sell and go under the ring, wait for the guy to lift up the apron and reach through the frame, then you pull him against it?" We did it and everyone was blown away and that became my gimmick -- I use the ring as my tag team partner -- and then you're only limited by your own imagination. These days I just think "What would Fit do?"

 

You've been a guest trainer for several seminars. How did you decide what to cover?

 

Honestly, I went in with zero plan. I looked around the room and thought "Wait a minute, I'm not going to show these guys any moves. They can watch a video tape and learn that." Any trainer, no matter what experience they're at, they can put a video tape on and break the move down. Moves don't mean shit. You don't get over by doing moves.

 

So I ended up just talking about the most important things in wrestling. For instance, you can do a bunch of highspots, cool, you do a bunch of highspots but when people leave, you ask them who was favourite wrestler and they say "Oh, I don't know, there was this guy who did this, this and this" but they don't remember you, the person. You've got to learn to get yourself over as you the person. That's when they buy your merch and leave the show and remember who you were, talk about you and your name and your face.

 

I'd also break down small things, like I'd get people to shoot somebody off the ropes. I hate when people shoot somebody from one rope to another rope, that's a bad habit of people. That and stomping their feet. That's one of the things people always say when they knock "fake pro wrestling": they're giving you a demonstration [of what's 'fake"] so why do it?

 

Another thing is strikes. People in wrestling think strikes are the least important thing, but strikes are the most important thing. People throw these shady looking punches when they're about to throw somebody off the ropes for some high spot which means dick. If you're in a bar and you go to the toilet and then you come back and somebody's fingering your bird, you're not going to grab them and shoot them off the wall and give them a big boot. You're going to punch them in the face. People get punches, they've been punched, they've given punches, that's the one thing people actually get. They don't get moonsaults, they don't get shooting star presses, they don't get shooting people off a ropes. I talk about things like that and I go off on different tangents: it all comes to me as I go along. I'm obsessed with the intricacies of wrestling.

 

What's the most important thing a wrestler needs to know or do when they go to a school or a seminar?

 

Prepare some good questions about things you really want to know. There's no such thing as a stupid question, no matter how ridiculous it may seem to some people. I always tell people if something's going over there head, don't be afraid to ask because it's the only way you're going to learn.

[goc]

I think the "Drew wasn't ready for his push" talk is overblown. Maybe it's true from a maturity standpoint but in the ring I think he definitely was good enough to get a strong midcard push. Go back and watch his PPV matches from the time against guys like Kofi Kingston and John Morrison and you'll see they were good and those were two guys who could be rather hit and miss in singles matches and weren't exactly ring generals who could lead a green guy through a good match. I think his best work from that time period was clearly with Matt Hardy but I can't think of any PPV match he had where you could say he shit the bed and was exposed as not being worthy of his push.

[joeg]

I remember his push from that time I remember watching it more and thinking thats a guy with a lot of talent who could be very good some day than watching and thinking thats a guy who's very good. I didn't think he was really good until his Evolve run.

[jcmmnx]

Sasha was 23 when she was called up, and off the top of my head is one of if not the best example of someone that young handling the spotlight on the main roster well at that age in recent times. It seems like most of the NXT call ups these days are late 20's at the youngest.

[The Thread Killer]

So Drew McIntyre was a guest on the E&C Pod of Awesomeness a couple of weeks ago, and he and Edge & Christian had a great conversation about his career. The good thing is that the three guys are friends, so it doesn't feel like a formal interview. Drew is very candid about his problems during his first run, and how he has changed. This is really worth checking out and provides some great insight into Drew McIntyre, his career and subsequent comeback.

 

WARNING: If you do listen to this, you will notice a faint but annoying intermittent beeping in the background. That would be Edge's smoke detector. The battery is dying, and he couldn't figure out how to change it for a few weeks. It got so annoying people were busting his chops about it on Twitter. He has since fixed it.

 

The interview starts at 23:46.

[ZThomas]

Sasha was 23 when she was called up, and off the top of my head is one of if not the best example of someone that young handling the spotlight on the main roster well at that age in recent times. It seems like most of the NXT call ups these days are late 20's at the youngest.

Sasha spent 3 years in NXT before she got called up, I dont think Nia Jax spent 9 months on NXT tv before he got called up. Did Strowman even have a match on NXT tv before he got called up. WWE appearently believe they call make a star out of anybody at any level of experience if they have a certain look they want at that particular time. Drew is way better overall than he was in 2012 even though he was very good then, Its not like he was getting a Roman Reign like push in 09, Maybe if he did , He might have but the Indy Run helped alot. Imagine how much better other guys with no outside WWE experience would be. Its a shame Lashley and Masters havent gotten another run. Its unfair that a guy like Lashley spent weeks in OVW got put on WWE tv wasnt ready for his push they gave up on him and other political shit happened he left and got better in TNA of all places.