Ladies and gentlemen, the 2020 edition of the ever cherished Royal Rumble is upon us! It’s part of what promises to be an exceptionally loaded weekend. The Rumble is a time honored tradition, and has been likened to a WWE all-star game among other things. It’s a ton of fun, but it’s also got huge stakes, as the winner of the match goes on to challenge for either the WWE or Universal Championships at WrestleMania. Suffice to say, many consider the match to be one of WWE’s premiere star making vehicles. And at this point in time, there are few stars more prime for the making than Drew McIntyre.
This is the first in a mini-series. I will be looking into ten favorites for both the Men’s and Women’s Royal Rumble matches to see what their chances of winning are. The tenth name for each is one you can decide by voting in this poll! To see someone’s chances at winning the Rumble, it’s generally effective to look at how their past year went. So with that in mind, the first portion of these previews will be largely based around recapping how each competitor’s 2019. And for this first one, well… eh, let’s just get to it.
Drew McIntyre – Relevant Stats
- WWE Debut: 2009
- First Rumble appearance: 2010
- He has never won a Rumble match before.
- This will be his fifth Royal Rumble appearance.
- He has never been a world champion on WWE’s main roster.
- He has amassed four total eliminations in his Rumble history.
- Current betting odds: +500
How 2019 Went For Drew McIntyre:
Drew McIntyre came into 2019 on everyone’s watchlist. Really ever since he returned to the company with NXT three years ago, there’s been a real sense of destiny surrounding him. He came back hilariously far removed from the 3MB incarnation we’d seen him in a mere three years prior. Per today’s standards the dude is huge, he’s athletic, skilled, charismatic and has a great look. He carries himself like he’s a major player… there’s just no hole in his game anymore. If anyone on the main roster is an obvious superstar in the making, it would have to be him.
However… last year it didn’t come to pass in any conceivable way. As is distressingly common in modern WWE, even the most obvious of potential stars ended up making very little impact. But even for those of us who are all too accustomed to this phenomenon, McIntyre seems a particularly egregious case. Legitimately, he’s a very difficult one to screw up. There were only two things that could possibly hold him back. Shoddy booking, and the gratingly shrill MIDI tune that he uses for his theme song.
Never has a CFO$ song made me beg for real instruments more than those impossibly fake bagpipes. Like seriously, this is a tangent here I know, but he went from Broken Dreams to THAT. That is one of the biggest theme song downgrades in pro wrestling history, it’s been three years and I’m still coming to terms with it.
But as much as I’d love to blame that terrible theme song for his woes, he could’ve easily become a hit anyway.
Alas, his 2019 saw him do very little of note for the most part. He did spend the first few months beating the everloving hell out of Dean Ambrose in his last singles feud, but that was building up to a match with Roman Reigns at Mania – the latter’s first one-on-one bout since returning from his leukemia scare. Suffice to say, any opponent for Roman that night would’ve been largely irrelevant and wholly doomed. Having Drew beat him there would’ve been a truly horrible idea.
After Mania he continued feuding with Roman and Seth, and as part of this, joined forces with Elias and Bobby Lashley as Baron Corbin’s henchmen. They were basically the prototype of what Roode, Ziggler and the Revival are to Corbin now. Their motivations for backing Corbin were even less defined than his current cronies. But it should go without saying that it was not something that placed him particularly high on the card. While he was feuding and working with big stars, he was also losing to them with incredible consistency. Speaking of which, in the midst of this he rather randomly teamed with Shane McMahon against Roman Reigns and The Undertaker. Three guesses who took the fall in that one.
After that, he spent the rest of the summer in a feud with Cedric Alexander.
Cedric’s talented as hell and I love him, but this was really not the best move for Drew at that point. This was a time where he really needed more credibility and going 50/50 with Cedric did nothing to achieve this, even if they did manage to have some really good TV matches. That Alexander basically disappeared from the face of the Earth by the time 2019 ended just made McIntyre look all the worse for this in hindsight.
McIntyre was one of the favorites of many to win KOTR in what would’ve been a nice way for him to bounce back. But then he was eliminated in the first round by Ricochet, starting another feud. Again, the two of them had some great matches, but it was another 50/50 for McIntyre and he seemed to be falling further and further down the card.
Into the fall, he joined Team Flair for their match with Team Hogan at Crown Jewel. If nothing else, he was something of a spokesman for the team. He was very vocal in his tirades against Hogan and his crew, so much so that he convinced some people into honest-to-God thinking we were about to get a Hogan/McIntyre match. I wasn’t among those people but they did exist, and that’s impressive in a way.
He closed out the year with a series of easy squash victories to try and finally rebuild him a bit, and also planted the seeds for his feud with Randy Orton which is currently ongoing.
So where does that leave his Rumble chances?
The above probably looks really negative. And indeed, it should. He didn’t really have a very good 2019. Honestly, given what was expected of him, it was kind of a terrible year. But this is one of those things about WWE that is equal parts exciting and frustrating. Recent runs of fortune, even spanning whole years, can be reversed in an instant.
It’s truly telling that in spite of everything, Vegas has Drew McIntyre tied for second most likely winner of the Men’s Rumble match. It’s telling both in how WWE works and also in how damn easy it was to make him look like a star again. Two months of rebuilding and a sly babyface turn, and suddenly McIntyre is sitting pretty at the best possible time. By no means was him winning the plan a few months ago, but then, turning Rollins heel probably wasn’t either. Everything’s been turned upside down at the top of the card, atleast as far as Raw goes. And that means McIntyre is an impulse away from headlining WrestleMania.
So yeah, I think it’s entirely possible actually. Now granted I don’t feel as good about it as Vegas does, there’s a few other candidates are more likely. But I’d be more than hype to see Drew McIntyre get it done and turn his whole career around.
What would his story be?
McIntyre’s story upon winning the Rumble would be interesting. He doesn’t really have anything built-in as far as who he challenges goes. Again, if it happens, it’ll be something of a last-minute change, and this is indicative of that. Whether he ends up challenging Brock Lesnar or the Fiend, or even Daniel Bryan or anyone on Raw that might beat Brock, I think the story would be the same.
It’s about McIntyre achieving his destiny. It’s about living up to his own expectations for the first time. He may never have a better opportunity to finally, finally, finally cement himself as the main eventer he was brought onboard to be back in 2009. He can be the man that the Chosen One was always supposed to be, eleven years in the making.
