WWE: Drew McIntyre on His Decision to Stay in WWE, Matt Camp on WWE’s Mentality for Post-show Press Conferences, A&E WWE Ratings

May 22, 2024

Drew McIntyre Comments on His Decision to Sign New Deal with WWE

As noted before, Drew McIntyre recently signed a new contract with WWE to remain in the company for the foreseeable future.

PWInsider held a recent interview with McIntyre. One of the topics discussed included McIntyre’s thoughts about his decision to sign a new contract with WWE to stay in the company.

“It’s the hardest thing that I’ve had to deal with. This was always the dream since I was a kid – make it to WWE, and honestly, I’d never truly considered, oh yeah, you have to move to America, until I got signed. I was talking about this earlier during an interview, and I did all the work, I had the self-belief. I was like, I’m going to be the first ever Scottish person signed directly from Scotland to WWE, and I finally did it. I had the contract in my hand and I went wait – I have to move to America and taking that into account and I’m so close with my family, so close with my mother, it was very hard to be away. But they were so encouraging, kept pushing me forward, keep chasing the dream. When you’re young, you can put yourself in that mode of just work, work, work. When I was a kid – work, work, work, party, party, party. You don’t think too much, but years can slip by real quickly, and I’d get home maybe once a year during that period. It wasn’t enough, but over these past few years, I’ve grown up a lot more, I started thinking a lot more about back home and seeing people not with us anymore, like my mom, and my dad getting older, and my brother having my nephews, two kids, and seeing how big they get, I realize – I want to be working on my dream, I don’t want to give that up, but at the same time I want to be home more, I want to try to find that balance cause that’s where I’m at in my life now and thankfully, thanks to Nick Khan and Triple H and WWE, we got there, where I feel comfortable with my family and my wife and I feel comfortable, I’m gonna be able to give to the company and give to my family at the same time.”

McIntyre also gave his thoughts about if he had considered the idea of leaving WWE prior to signing a new deal.

“It was never a consideration, no. I’m wrestling with the WWE, I don’t think…in the sense that, what, am I gonna go wrestle somewhere else? Because this is where I want to wrestle. I don’t want to be anywhere else but our family has gone through a lot over the past year. My wife’s sister unfortunately passed a year ago yesterday. That was very difficult, and I felt like I’m gonna have to take some serious time for my family. There was a period where I was like, maybe I’ll just have to take a little break and come back and you know, just some uncertainty but no, thankfully as a family we came together, WWE gave me the time I needed whenever I needed it during that period. In the end, you know, as a family, we came together, we had a conversation, what was best for us, the company were unbelievable with that and thankfully, everybody is in a great place right now.”

Matt Camp on WWE’s Mentality for Post-Show Press Conferences for Their Events

A recent episode of the Wrestling Matt Show podcast featured host and former WWE personality Matt Camp discussing his thoughts about WWE’s mentality when it came to the post-show press conferences for their events. Camp stated that WWE wants fans to be in the press room and for them to be part of the show and not wantin them to mess with that part of it.

“Let me tell you about WWE and a little insight because something that will definitely come up again, this weekend, whether it’d be because of King and Queen of the Ring or because of Double or Nothing, are these post-show press conferences and I know that these post-show press conferences have been quite the lightning rod of conversation. When they were brought back, and if I’m wrong on this, correct me but I think I’m right about this. When they were brought back for WarGames 2022, Survivor Series in Boston, I had done a show there. Kayla (Braxton) and I had done The Bump and Michael Cole called me and said, ‘Hey, if you’re still available –’ and I was — ‘can you go do the Kickoff?’ ‘Sure, I’m there’ and when I was there, I knew about the press conferences so I went to the Head of WWE Digital and I said, ‘Hey, I know you’re doing the press conference. I would like to be part of the press conference as media’ and I put ‘media’ in quotes because you guys know where I worked. I worked at WWE. I was state media and I said, ‘Listen, I just wanna cover the show as a credentialed press member.’ Obviously, none of that is that real or anything. It’s a scripted show, everything about it is scripted. They just wanted to have this post-show press conference. So, I said, ‘Can I just go in there and ask a question?’ ‘Sure,’ and I talked to a name who has come up in the wrestling world a lot more… I talked to Chris Legentil, who we know now, I think very important in WWE in P.R. and he kind of gave the heads up of, ‘Hey, you can do this. Yeah, we’d love to have you ask a question.’ You know why? Because I was a reliable person to ask a question. I wasn’t gonna say anything crazy, I work there. Nothing crazy was going on at the time. Not like as it’s been the last few months where Triple H has fumbled and stumbled at some of these questions about the lawsuit or about Drew Gulak or anything like that. This was a pretty quiet time all things considered… Sami (Zayn) wins the match for Bloodline and all that stuff. I just wanted to ask about the show and I remember asking (Paul) Heyman a question and asking Sami a question. I’m sure you can go back and watch this footage… So I’m just asking a question. I wanted it to be part of something that we put on The Bump. We never end up putting any of this stuff on The Bump. Take that for what you will. But I wanted to just be part of the show. That’s all I looked at this as. It’s a press conference about something that is scripted. We’re gonna ask questions for the most part of the media that was there, because you’re talking about, ‘Well how’d you feel about this?’ And there’s a gray area of kayfabe and what’s real and story and you were getting some real emotions out of people like Sami Zayn. Paul kept it very on the level but Paul’s always been very good at finding that gray area. Bringing that reality to a scripted (setting) and that’s how it started and I remember the media that was in there and I’ll tell you this, just to give you an idea of why I think we see the ‘media members’ get criticized is after I was done, one of the media members came up to me and asked for a picture. Happy to do so but I don’t think you’re giving off the right message to WWE or maybe you are because that’s exactly what they want. They want fans in there, they want people that want to be part of the show, that don’t want to mess with their part of the show. The press conference is part of the show. Does Triple H come out at the end and go, ‘We set all these –’ yeah, sure, that’s the real part. But they want this just to be an addendum to the end of the show, we wrap things up and we let people speak a little bit and show their excitement and for the most part, they want softballs, right? That’s why there have been criticism of some of these questions so I did that a few times. Probably five, six times. The Royal Rumble one last year where Cody (Rhodes) wins and he drinks the Mountain Dew and says, ‘That’s excellent’ because he’s a fantastic politician that way. We all laughed at that. At that very same press conference though… a pretty well-known sports entertainment, wrestling reporter is talking to Cody and literally plugs his website and the price of his website. Right there, I think your credibility goes out the window. WWE is gonna laugh at that and go, ah yeah, he’s just playing along. You don’t see someone at the end of the NBA playoffs when they’re doing press conferences plugging — they identify where they’re from but they’re not going, well, you know, it costs $9.99 to listen to what I do. No. I’ve heard people at press conferences for WWE, I’ve heard people at press conferences for AEW use their stage name or use their nickname. You’re killing your credibility doing that kind of stuff. Then you are playing into everything they want. Now listen, if WWE wants to have these press conferences and they’re going to invite press in — I was state media. I’m trying to ask good questions to create good content. I work there. I know other people went there for that and they would high five each other that they were covering it. There is a phrase that I’ve lived by for a very long time in my life, ‘Act as if. Act as if you’ve been there before.’ It’s from a movie called Boiler Room. It’s a great movie. But you have to present yourself in a certain way and if you’re gonna come in there talking about your nickname or trying to be buddy-buddy or making jokes, that’s not what the media does. If you wanna be taken seriously and if you wanna just be part of the show, you can be part of the show, because that’s what WWE wants when they get those questions at those shows. They want you to be part of it. They don’t want you to push. I think they could do a better job of prepping Triple H on these so he’s so he’s not saying, ‘Well I didn’t read the lawsuit’ or, ‘I don’t wanna talk — this guy’s not credible.’ He rips Fightful and he rips Mike Johnson for not being credible and then everybody’s getting cheese from Fairfield and Greenwich, Connecticut. If he’s prepped better, that stuff doesn’t happen.”

Transcript h/t: PostWrestling.com

A&E WWE Programming Ratings – May 19, 2024

This past Sunday’s Biography: WWE Legends drew 226,000 viewers on A&E. This episode also drew a 0.07 rating in the 18-49 demographic and a #39 key demographic ranking. This was down compared to the March 31st episode’s 337,000 viewers and 0.11 rating. This episode focused on Steve Austin.

This past Sunday’s WWE Rivals episode drew 301,000 viewers on A&E. This episode also drew a 0.07 rating in the 18-49 demographic and a #37 key demographic ranking. This was up compared last week’s first doubleheader episode of 271,000 viewers but down compared to its 0.10 rating. This episode focused on the famous Hulk Hogan vs. Macho Man Randy Savage rivalry.

Source: SpoilerTV