How AEW Should Debut Drew McIntyre

The Drew McIntyre that wrestles outside of WWE reflects more about what helped launch All Elite Wrestling than the average 2023 edition of Dynamite.

McIntyre - who from here on out will be referred to as Drew Galloway because this will definitely be his branding anywhere he works away from the market leader - wrestled with a point to prove from the moment he was released in 2014. From figuring himself out bell-to-bell as a contemporary power-and-pace guy, to significant aesthetic changes, to dropping some tasty four-letter flourishes to developing a keen grasp of what those attending local/small/rival shows wanted, indies-and-Impact era Drew Galloway was a rare case of a wrestler serving multiple masters and succeeding.

Especially because the main master was the one that had sent him packing once before. Galloway wasn't doing those hard yards with the expressed purpose of going back to WWE, but he's spoken in the years since about his desire to prove the original release to be the wrong call. The fruitfulness of his return has always scanned as vindication, even if the goals eventually changed and he constantly felt like a performer falling just short of the rewards he was owed.

AEW are about to run Wembley Stadium, disproving once and for all that WWE is the only place to get WrestleMania-like reactions from WrestleMania-like crowds. And they could do worse than following up on that by eventually setting Galloway up for the major United Kingdom win he never received with the market leader.

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