With all said and done at the 2025 Royal Rumble, Drew McIntyre has become a major talking point.
The Men’s Royal Rumble match which main evented the show was incredibly well received by the fans due to the loaded line-up, pacing and interactions throughout. Although some were unhappy that Jey Uso was the winner of the match, others have hailed the match as one of the best in its 38-year history. However, shortly after the show, multiple reports broke concerning what happened with McIntyre backstage.
McIntyre entered the match at number 17. The winner of the 2020 match lasted around 27 minutes beforre being eliminated by Damian Priest in an elimination that looked to be rushed and was not entirely caught on camera. After the show, Mike Johnson of PIWnsider first reported that McIntyre was “screaming and cursing” backstage, adding that “someone had to get their moves in.” McIntyre then reportedly “loudly stormed out” of the venue before the end of the show. Although some fans believed this to be part of a greater storyline, multiple sources have since backed this up as being legitimate and that the former WWE Champion is frustrated by the events that unfolded.
Drew McIntyre Unhappy
Shortly after the PWInsider news broke, Dave Meltzer stated on Wrestling Observer Radio that “a lot of people were p**sed at in that match” as one entrant “was trying to get himself over and not the match over.” Another report from The Daily Mail added that McInthre is set to face Damian Priest at WrestleMania in what has been described as ‘nothing match’ and that McIntyre believes he deserves a more prominent match given his stellar 2024.
As part of a Daily Update, Dave Meltzer of The Wrestling Observer also stated that what happened with McIntyre was not part of a storyline, noting how the elimination did not come across smoothly:
McIntyre and Damian Priest were to start an angle and they felt the momentum was lost when LA Knight got in the way as they were doing the Priest throwing out of McIntyre. The top guys want things to go smoothly and have their story come off as planned, and that mentality is why they’re top guys. I don’t know if that means McIntyre is also headed to Smackdown or not, but that’s a possibility.
In a further report by Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful Select, who also confirms that nobody was “in on it”, a number of talent reached out to say that they were in agreement with McIntyre and implied that the source of the frustration was LA Knight. Priest was also set to eliminate McIntyre before Logan Paul’s entrance, setting up a match for WrestleMania and presumably leading to McIntyre being moved over to SmackDown.
Featured image: WWE
