Drew McIntyre recently appeared on Chasing Glory with Lilian Garcia to talk about various topics. Here are the highlights.
Wrestling with his younger brother growing up:
“He was my original wrestling training partner. We used to wrestle each other, but we’d always beat him up and make him cry. We were kind of weird kids. It wasn’t like we were just fighting to fight, just nonsensical rolling around, punching each other or grabbing holds and getting separated, we kind of worked together to put on the best match we could. We’d pick a character each and pick their moveset and try to have the best match possible. Before inevitably I made him cry.
We were just bizarre kind of kids and we’d see other brothers fighting, our friends fighting. It was just rolling around and just a lot of nonsense. We’re like, “Look at them, they don’t know what they’re doing!” We’d work together to put on the best possible show when we were having a fight and people would start circling around us even at the park and we’d get into a wrestling style situation. So from a young age, we didn’t know how it worked, but we knew we wanted to entertain and we knew working together put on th best possible show and drew the most attention.”
How he discovered his love for wrestling:
“As far back as I can remember. Maybe at one point I wanted to play for my favorite soccer club, the Glasgow Rangers, but aside that it was just wrestling. How am I going to do this? I need to figure it out. We had a couple of British wrestling VHS’s and I didn’t know the difference between WWF and the British wrestling so I just assumed everybody was a part of WWF. I didn’t realize there was all these different companies and there was a British wrestling scene that had finished at the point pretty much. It was the old tapes that my Dad had and he was explaining to me who they all were, getting all the education on the British wrestling, but I was just obsessed, anything I could get my hands on, if my friends had any tapes, I’d be around at their house watching them over and over. I just had to figure out a way to do it.”
What the FBI gave him when he was 10 years old:
“I remember I used to get a subscription to this magazine, The X-Factor. It just had random stuff. It would talk about dangerous animals, or ghost stories, or conspiracy theories. Again I was 10 and I gave a sample letter to write to the FBI if you want information under the Freedom For Information Act. So I sent away to America and I got about 3 documents in a big dossier and my dad was waiting for me when I got home holding this asking me, “Son, why are the FBI sending you things in the mail?” And I went, “Oh because I asked for it Dad.” He was like, “Let put this to you again, why are the FBI in America sending you letters in the mail?” I was like, “Again Dad, I asked for it under the Freedom For Information Act!” He was like, “You’re 10! What is wrong with you?” So I was a strange kid.”
Living through the death of his mother:
“I think maybe for a long time I didn’t realize how much it was affecting me, because it certainly did. I kind of went off the rails for a very very long time. That’s pretty much what it comes down to, I never dealt with it. I don’t think I ever really dealt with it to be honest or never really will deal with it. That certainly sent me off the rails for a while, but eventually I knew I had to get it together. I knew she’d be disappointed in the way I was acting, the way I was throwing away my opportunities and throwing away life, because life’s too short. She’s an example of how short it really can be, but how much you can get in.”