Drew McIntyre Recalls ‘Runway Man’ Gimmick Pitched By John Laurinaitis Prior To ‘Chosen One’ Gimmick, Thought ‘Oh No’ Hearing The Idea

Drew McIntyre looks back at the gimmick that he was originally supposed to debut with in WWE.

When McIntyre originally made his WWE debut in 2007, he would soon become known as the ‘Chosen One’ by Vince McMahon, who at the time was still the chairman of WWE. This gimmick would lead to McIntyre being able to flex his power over the likes of SmackDown general manager Teddy Long.

While speaking to No-Contest Wrestling in a new interview, Drew McIntyre recalled a gimmick that he dubbed ‘Runway Man’, that was pitched to him prior to becoming ‘The Chosen One’.

There’s a couple, but I think the one that’s called- The Runway Man. (laughs) I remember he pitched to me, John Laurinaitis, who was head of talent relations at the time, and telling me, you know what, Florida Championship Wrestling, which was there prior to NXT, we know today, the original developmental, and he built it up. He built it up. I was listening to him describe the character and thought, ‘oh no, oh no, oh no.’ Then he went ‘the name, the Runway Man, you’re going to have your own model runway and you’re going to walk down like a model.’ And you’re like, oh my goodness. I was picturing in my head, basically all my dreams were going to hell. The life’s work of a Scotsman, it was all going down the toilet. The next meeting after Johnny was to go to Vince himself and pitch this idea, and I kind of sat silent and Johnny pitched it to Vince, and I think Vince saw my face the whole time. He just said, ‘what do you think?’ (And I said) ‘whatever you need me to do, I’ll make it work.’ But I had my head down the whole time. and I think he read me like he doesn’t want to do this. Thankfully, they let me play closer to myself. But I learned years later, it was nowhere close to myself because it took me until I returned to WWE after getting fired, which we’ll probably talk about, before I finally found myself as a wrestler and as a human.”

Elsewhere in the same interview, McIntyre recalled feeling like ‘Bambi on ice’ during the first year of his wrestling training. You can read more about that here.

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