The reinvention of Drew McIntyre was a long process that took place over several years to turn him into the WWE Superstar we see today.
Drew McIntyre was a recent guest on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet to discuss a wide variety of subjects. When asked about the reinvention of his character, McIntyre admitted there were a lot of steps taken to get him to where he is today.
“Oh there are a lot of steps. Thankfully I have a book available called Chosen Destiny, which is out now,” Drew McIntyre said. “Step one, as my wife reminded me, wasn’t just ‘I’m going to take over the wrestling world outside of WWE and redefine what it means to be an independent wrestler. ‘ I’d like to say that, and I did say that, but my wife reminded me that I was full of anxiety and uncertainty. I had been in WWE for a long time, but never had any significant matches, significant interviews, because I always read from the script line by line. I was very nervous, but I did believe that this is something that I was meant to do. I did believe that I could go out there and make a name for myself and reinvent Drew McIntyre/Drew Galloway.
“Right away I knew I had to go back to Scotland to get my mission statement out to ICW, Insane Championship Wrestling, where all my friends were that I started with. Business was on the upswing there, they had their biggest show in the UK. It was 1,500 people there and it was 3 weeks after I got released. I told the promoter Mark Dallas that everyone is contacting me, why are you not contacting me? He said I thought my friend would be upset that he was fired so I wanted to give him a moment before I tried to book him on a wrestling show.’ I said that I appreciated that, but I want to be on the show in 3 weeks and I want to keep it a secret.
“So, you know, he sorted out the travel and we kept it a secret between 3 people. I showed up in Scotland, there is a famous clip online where I spoke for 20 full minutes unscripted and said everything that I was feeling at the time. It got such an insane response afterwards, it felt so good to get it out, it felt so good to be myself and I said some bold comments in there. ‘I’m going to show you the real Drew Galloway, take over the world as far as I’m concerned and put ICW on the map. This little company is going to take over the world.’ A lot of people watched it and went ‘Oh my God look at this guy. This is incredible, he is going to do some big things.’ Including Mick Foley, who went on Stone Cold’s podcast and talked about me, he texted Triple H and said ‘You need to keep an eye on Drew.’
“Then there were the other people who watched me in 3MB and said ‘This guy is out of his mind. He’s not going to do anything.’ But that was phase 1, I have literally looked myself in the mirror and said that was a tough past few years in WWE professionally and especially personally, in the end it is on you for not getting the help you needed personally but also working as hard as you could professionally. You would have been happy to be the water boy at one point, you forgot why you came here, you lost perspective, never let that happen again. I worked as hard as I could, left no stone unturned and only being accountable to one person and one person only, social media. I’m kidding, I don’t listen to fricking social media, ever.
“Everyone out there, don’t listen to social media. The person in the mirror is the only person I listened to, aside from the wife. There were other areas that I still had to work on, the partying wasn’t gone yet and I was still burning the candle at both ends. But I took every booking that I could and was lucky enough that people believed me and gave me a platform to apply my craft and learn to become a leader, get confident in the ring, get confident on the microphone and build myself to a place where I was ready. The guy that was faking it and until he made it in the beginning everybody believed in, finally believed in himself and became what Vince and Triple H saw all those years ago.
“I finally became the Drew that I could be. Once, I’m not talking about professionally, I broke my neck that one time, I had to sit at home for the first time in my life for 8 weeks. I had the come to Jesus talk with my wife and we talked about partying and going out and how I am giving it my all but I’m not giving it my all. I said you know what, you are right. As successful as I am right now, my brother referred to me as a verb. ‘Do a Drew. Leave WWE and become more successful.’ Which was very cool. I still had a way to go, I looked in the mirror and looked at my body and said ‘You could step into the ring with Brock Lesnar right now.
“The biggest attraction at the time and people would go “He could bet Brock”’ You got to work on the body, you got to cut out the negative stuff. So, I cut out the partying that I was doing all the time. Within a few months of changing my diet up and changing my training up, my body changed dramatically. I then saw myself in the mirror and I went ‘That’s the guy who is ready to take on the world.’ I figured it would be Japan, but I took the phone call from Triple H, and then I knew it was time to go back to WWE.”
READ MORE: Drew McIntyre Says ‘We Are Wrestlers In A Wrestling Ring’ On 8/15 WWE RAW
What do you make of Drew McIntyre’s comments? Are you excited to see him challenge Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship at Clash at the Castle? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
