Drew McIntyre has recalled being told by Vince McMahon to only listen to The Undertaker during his early years in WWE.
The Scottish Warrior was first signed by WWE in 2007 and quickly made his debut on SmackDown alongside Dave Taylor before being sent back to WWE’s developmental system for a couple of years.
McIntyre then re-debuted in 2009 and was introduced by Vince McMahon as a “future World Champion” and dubbed ‘The Chosen One’.
However, his initial run did not go as planned and he was eventually released from the company in 2014. But, after a successful spell on the independent circuit, McIntyre returned to WWE in 2017 and fulfilled his potential by capturing the WWE Championship from Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 36.
Speaking on the ‘Hollywood Raw’ podcast, McIntyre recalled his early years in WWE and how he and Sheamus were seen as long term projects by the company:
“Sheamus and I were kind of the first two people they took as the kind of projects. With Sheamus on Raw and myself on SmackDown. Sheamus was put under the Triple H learning tree and I was going to The Undertaker learning tree.”
In fact, Drew was instructed to only listen to The Undertaker:
“Vince said ‘You don’t listen to anybody but The Undertaker.’ I wish I thought the way I think now back then, because [his] wrestling IQ is obviously off the charts. At the time, mine was a lot lower than it is now. So many of those lessons that I got, just flew right over my head. Thankfully I remembered a few,”
Drew McIntyre was recently pulled from a number of WWE live events due to suffering from a bad case of food poisoning. But the former WWE Champion is expected to return to television soon and will be fit to compete in his scheduled Strap match against Karrion Kross at Extreme Rules.
H/t to SEScoops for the transcription.