Drew McIntyre has advice for talent released from their WWE contracts.
In 2014, Drew McIntyre was released from his WWE contract, ending his first run with the company. While he found some success during his early days and won the Intercontinental Championship in late 2009, the star had been relegated to a comedy role as part of the group 3MB by the time he was released, and he successfully reinvented himself on the independent scene before making his way back to WWE in 2017.
Speaking in a new interview with Good Karma Wrestling, Drew McIntyre addressed the recent spate of WWE releases that included Dolph Ziggler, Mustafa Ali, and Dana Brooke among others. McIntyre said he hopes the released stars are inspired to “do a Drew” and prove themselves with hard work.
“I hope they are inspired. From what I gather, the company literally tells people, ‘Do a Drew.’ My brother once said ‘you’ve become a verb.’ You have to go out there and reinvent yourself, grow your brand and make yourself more valuable. I believe that’s the advice that the company literally gives people and some of the Superstars that are released and come to me to ask for advice.
“Hopefully they’ll look at the template of what I did. When I left, the model was usually take that WWE character take it around the world, get paid X amount, the 2nd time around you’ll make a little less and finally you’ll find a wage that you’ll stop on and that will be your wage and hopefully one day you will make it back to WWE. My business mindset was, ‘that’s terrible business sense.’ I’m absolutely not doing that, I’m going to reinvent myself, I’m going to show what I can truly do.
“Social media is becoming really big which it was becoming huge in 2014. I can take everyone around the world with me on my journey and I’m really going to reinvent what it means to be an independent wrestler.”
Drew McIntyre Praised Cody Rhodes & Matt Cardona
Continuing, Drew McIntyre praised both Cody Rhodes and Matt Cardona for taking similar paths and reinventing themselves after being released from their own WWE contracts. Rhodes returned to WWE after helping to launch All Elite Wrestling, while Cardona remains a top force on the independent scene.
“Thankfully a lot of people believed in me, gave me a lot of opportunities, a lot of platforms to show what I can do and I really succeed and everybody can follow that. The next guy was Cody Rhodes and he had his own version which led to the creation of another company. You watch Matt Cardona now, while Cody and I eventually kind of went to the TV level, Matt’s been able to keep it at an independent level but really become super popular, super successful. And he has carny in him that I never truly had.”
At the upcoming Crown Jewel PLE, Drew McIntyre is set to challenge Seth Rollins for the World Heavyweight Championship.
h/t Fightful