He Was Ripping Off The Rock... Now He's Taking Over The World
He didn't just boast an incredibly TV-friendly tone of voice; this was his platform to prove that he could talk trash. With a soundbite-happy economy, he could essentially build a mini programme in a matter of seconds - strong currency in episodic wrestling TV. Few paid serious attention; it wasn't as if people were desperate to see Eli Drake get a WWE gig in major numbers. It wasn't as if Triple H himself paraded Eli Drake stood front row at a TakeOver event, and he had the chance.
Drake was fired by Impact in 2019. He didn't want to work an inter-gender match with Tessa Blanchard and already had heat with the office. Drake thought he was better than his lot, feeling he'd been "booked into oblivion". He was right - on both counts, it turns out.
As the 2010s unfolded, trends shifted away from Eli Drake. Intricate, super athletic and very long matches were in. It was almost mandatory to be a "great" wrestler between the ropes. Roman Reigns actually was great, an underrated babyface powerhouse, but was so unpopular through his profoundly oppressive booking that a trend developed almost in defiance of what a WWE Superstar was supposed to look like. Eli Drake, in short, was unfashionable. He didn't wear kick pads.
He belonged to a different era, and thus, it made sense that in late 2019 he was a part of Billy Corgan's NWA revival, which, before Tyrus was the World champion, actually commanded a half-decent following and not inconsiderable buzz. That Powerrr was talked about at all as All Elite Wrestling rose to prominence was some feat. Known in some fan circles as the best company for promos, during the early phase of Dynamite in which only one wrestler seemed to talk per episode, Eddie Kingston and Ricky Starks drew rave reviews for their work. At first, Drake bordered on cringe. He cut a call to arms promo in which he tried to embody the "spirit" of the NWA.
"Is Atlanta, GA NWA country? It doesn't take a scientist to look around this place, and you can tell, there's something different about this place. There's just something a little different that gives you a different feeling because everywhere you look in the wrestling business today, you got a bunch of children running around this business - but you come here to the NWA, you got men. You got grown men."
The implication was that that, outside of the NWA, everybody else was an undersized cosplay wrestler.
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