Drew McIntyre
Drew McIntyre recently reflected on his long road towards becoming one of the top draws in the World Wrestling Entertainment.
The two-time WWE champion is enjoying success in his second run in the promotion, something that he had never experienced during his initial stint that started when Vince McMahon cut a promo ordaining him as “The Chosen One.”
“My thoughts at the time were ‘Oh, this is pretty cool,’” McIntyre told Filipino reporters during a virtual media roundtable last week. “I was like a legit 23, 24 (year old) who was always dreaming to be in the WWE. I was signed at 21 years old straight from university, straight from Scotland and suddenly I get a pretty significant storyline.”
McIntyre was referring to a 2009 edition of Smackdown when McMahon, the WWE chairman who usually takes part in on-screen storylines, cut a promo telling the audience of how the Scottish wrestler will be a future WWE champion.
“I was standing at the Gorilla Position (a part of the WWE’s backstage area) right before I go out of the curtain and I was told Vince is gonna say something and then go out shake his hand and then do your promo. So I said ‘Oh no problem,’” McIntyre said of the WWE chairman’s promo.
“So I watched live with the rest of the world the Chosen One promo like this individual reminds me something of myself, he’s a handsome son of a gun, high intellect and he’s a future world champion so I watched that with everyone else.
“I was like ‘Is he talking about me?’ and they said like ‘Yes, he’s talking about you.’ So I went out of the ring and shook his hand and then do the Chosen One story. But it was incredible. You know, I really never appreciated how big it was. I understood it was big. Vince had never done that before and he’ll probably never gonna do that again but I never understood the gravity of it until years later and it’s an awesome part of my story. I loved every second of it,” McIntyre added.
McIntyre, however, failed to live up to expectations after spending the rest of his initial WWE run languishing at the bottom of the card while being put in numerous gimmicks such as forming a stable with future WWE champion Jinder Mahal and Heath Slater called 3MB.
He was eventually released by the WWE in mid-2014.
But McIntyre credits the desire of finding ways to reinvent himself during his time in TNA Wrestling and independent scene as a reason for eventually getting signed back by the WWE in 2017.
This time, McIntyre made himself a legitimate main eventer, resulting in a huge 2020 push that saw him win the Royal Rumble and being trusted by the WWE to hold the title by beating Brock Lesnar at Wrestlemania 36.
He held the WWE Championship another time before the end of 2020 and is eyeing to get another chance going into the Money in the Bank pay-per-view event.
Looking back, McIntyre’s road to fulfill McMahon’s prophecy made the journey even sweeter.
“What’s cooler about my journey is that the fall and all the ups and downs and fighting my way to the top and finally reaching the top that as the boss’ Chosen One, I was never able to become champion, never able to reach the top of the mountain,” he said.
“But I feel like I became the fans’ Chosen One, and around the beginning of 2020 they took me to the top. It was a lot cooler doing it as the fans’ Chosen One instead of being the office’s Chosen One.”