WWE Champion Drew McIntyre’s First Character Was Inspired by Axl Rose
WWE Champion Drew McIntyre is defending his title this Sunday (Aug. 23) at Summerslam against Randy Orton, but first, he joined us via Zoom to prove and disprove what’s written about him on Wikipedia.
We started this episode with a bang, asking McIntyre about contacting the FBI when he was in elementary school. It’s true that the future wrestler was into conspiracies about UFOs, and thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, he was able to request documents from the U.S. government.
“Sure enough, a few weeks later, I came home from school [and] my dad was waiting for me in front of the television,” the wrestler recalls. “‘Son, your mother called me, I had to come home. Why are the FBI in America sending you all these documents?’ [It was] this huge dossier about five inches thick. ‘Dad, I asked for those documents.’ ‘Drew, you’re 10! Why can’t you just play football like everybody else?!”
He adds, “I went through them cover-to-cover. They blacked out all the good stuff. Realistically, if you found out too much, you’re probably going to disappear, so start focusing on that wrestling thing.”
McIntyre also went into his first gimmick as a narcissist rock star character, inspired by legends like Guns N' Roses singer Axl Rose. “When I was a kid, I was the biggest Axl Rose fan. Talking about wearing ridiculous outfits to wrestle in at such a young age, I went to a Halloween party when I was 14. I actually got asked to leave because I was wearing the Axl tiny biker shorts that Shawn Michaels once wore to referee a match back in the day in WWE. My art teacher painted my tattoos, I had the bandana, I had the wig on… I walked in there dressed as Axl, basically naked, and they sent my ass right back out. Axl gave me the confidence [for my first gimmick].”
Watch the Drew McIntyre edition of ‘Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?’ below and click here to grab your subscription to the WWE Network.
WWE Champion Drew McIntyre - Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?
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