Ahead of this Sunday’s WWE SummerSlam pay-per-view at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Ontario, the “Scottish Psychopath” Drew McIntyre sat down with Cathy Kelley for a retrospective interview tracing his career from the very beginning, training at one of the only two wrestling schools in the UK, to his original WWE release, all the way to where he is today.
During the interview, which you can check out below, McIntyre discussed what it was like to receive the call from WWE management when he was released from the company in 2014, as well as his attitude at the time.
“I was shocked initially. Myself, Jinder Mahal and Heath [Slater] as 3MB were on literally everything. All the live events, all the television shows. We were heavily featured, so I was surprised. At the end of the call I said, ‘That’s cool, I appreciate it, and I’ll see you down the line.’ I meant it.”
“I got off the call, sat and thought about it awhile, and spoke to a couple of buddies that have also been released. They told me what everybody does is you get released, and you start working for these smaller companies around the world. You play the WWE character you were doing on TV, and you make ‘X’ amount of money at first, and then as you come around the second time it goes down; third time it goes down, and you find a wage you can live on.”
“To me as a businessman, that sounded insane. No, I’m not going to do that. I’ve gotta reinvent myself. Apply all the lessons that I’ve learned over the years, and show everybody what I can truly do. I can truly be a main-event player. Within an hour I had arranged my first appearance in the UK for ICW, I spoke to the promoter there, Mark Dallas, told him I wanted to show up, be a surprise at their big show, and give my mission statement to the world. I flew to Scotland with a hoodie on, I hid at my dad’s house for three days with the blinds closed, snuck to the gym at the cover of night, and showed up in the ring to give the promo that really kick-started everything.”
Check out the full interview below.