Drew McIntyre is one of wrestling’s biggest stars – and his compelling real-life story is every bit as gripping as his outrageously scripted fights
I’m going to try to describe to you the general vibe of Drew McIntyre. Drew McIntyre is a
WWE Superstar. Hundreds of millions of people know this, but many others do not. This is the nature of World Wrestling Entertainment Superstardom – and Drew McIntyre is cheerfully resigned to it. He looks heavy, physically, as though it would take six or seven men – normal men – or eight or nine little weaklings like me, to lift him. Drew McIntyre could lift himself up, though, because he has the raw power of an industrial digger. He’s lounging on a sofa in front of me, pre-lockdown, a steak dinner lingering just behind him. And though he is unfailingly polite – thoughtful and sincere with just a crispy little burnt crust of humour round the edges – he does give off the energy, palpably, that he could toss the sofa he’s sitting on up in the air like a
baseball and headbutt it through the adjacent wall. He is at once capable of tenderly nuzzling a small puppy and kicking someone’s head through a pub urinal – and that’s what makes him such a captivating superstar. He is hard and soft. He is meat and iron. There’s a lot going on with him.
Earlier this year, McIntyre became the first Briton to win WWE’s Royal Rumble, a wrestling centrepiece event where dozens of the organisation’s storylines converge in a 30-man brawl from which a sole winner emerges. Meanwhile millions of wrestling fans all over the world stay at home watching late into the night, elbow-dropping their furniture in jubilation. Last week, in an empty arena, but viewed by an inflated audience self-isolating at home, he won his title-decider against
American wrestling royalty Brock Lesnar in what is the sport’s answer to the Superbowl – WrestleMania 36 – becoming the first Brit ever to do so.