The Scottish beast speaks about his time in NXT and the next stars to come up from the brand.
After being released from his WWE contract in the summer of 2014, Drew McIntyre pushed himself into the next gear, reinvented his character and also reinvented his physique. McIntyre returned to the sports-entertainment company in 2017 and is now looking to become WWE Universal Champion. Prior to his reemergence back onto the main roster Drew was a part of the NXT brand where he was an NXT Champion.
During his time in NXT Drew got to reconnect with British wrestling's own Robbie Brookside and Johnny Moss who are coaches at the Performance Center. He also got to learn under WWE Hall Of Famer Shawn Michaels as many did and still do at the P.C.. McIntyre is currently on the road with WWE for their European tour and when the company stopped in Barcelona, Drew spoke with Planeta Wrestling. The former RAW Tag Team Champion was asked about his time in NXT and discussed how helpful it was having Robbie Brookside and Johnny Moss and the rest of the coaches to help him further improve as an in-ring performer.
“Yeah, they’re perfect. These are guys who I used to travel with when I was a kid. Robbie Brookside, he used to make jokes about being my dad because we used to look so alike when he had long hair; he’s got short hair now. But this was when I was like 16 years old, 17 years old and he’d been around already at that point for - I mean I won’t say in case he sees this, a very long time." Drew joked. "But there’s nobody with more knowledge with a history of British wrestling like Robbie Brookside and Johnny Moss - fantastic talents so it’s good to see them in the Performance Center and it was cool when I was going to the Performance Center to work with Shawn Michaels and I would get to see them and catch up and hang out because they’re my buddies also.”
The question of who would he [Drew] select to be called up to the main roster was asked and he named-dropped the Velveteen Dream and the NXT North American Champion Ricochet.
“It’s too difficult a question. Everybody." McIntyre laughed. "Like when I came to NXT I knew it was the right move because NXT was in a position like it always is. It’s up here, then RAW and SmackDown get some of the talent - the talent move over and it restarts again, and it was during a restart phase that I came in, and we started building up our roster. We started building up the towns. The towns were down - we started getting more talent on the shows and I watched it go up and up and up. Then we got some more talent in; people started finding themselves like the Velveteen Dream and now, from top to bottom the roster is stacked." Drew expressed. "The houses are sold out, the crowds are sold out and it’s really in a good place right now. It’s so hard to choose because there’s so many talented people but, everyone talks about the Velveteen Dream so I that’s an obvious one. Ricochet is an obvious one.”
While discussing Velveteen Dream and Ricochet, both of those men have spotlighted matches next Saturday at NXT TakeOver: War Games II. Velveteen Dream will be challenging Tommaso Ciampa for the NXT Championship and Ricochet is competing in the War Games match.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Planeta Wrestling with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.
