Drew McIntyre On The Importance Of Being Able To Believably Stand Toe-To-Toe With Brock Lesnar
Drew McIntyre will get to stand across the ring from Brock Lesnar in a championship match at WrestleMania. That is an honor that only four other men can share.
Speaking with Sporting News, Drew McIntyre spoke about the importance of being able to believably stand across the ring from Brock Lesnar in the eyes of the casual fan. In his heart, McIntyre believes that he has truly done that.
The following quotes were passed along by Steve Muehlhausen.
“He is the guy. He is the special attraction. Not just in the land of pro wrestling, but in life, he’s one of the baddest men ever to walk the planet,” Drew began. “He tried football for a laugh and got to the last cut and got into that accident, so he wasn’t 100 percent. That didn’t work out. He knew wrestling and needed to work on his striking but thought he’d try the UFC. He won the title twice. He was a different level of athlete, different level of a human being. When I was outside of the company, I used the image of fighting Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania as motivation because now I get to learn to visualize and see things in my head outside the company. He was the biggest wrestling guy. I got to train for him. Brock Lesnar is the biggest attraction. He is so unpredictable in the ring. You got to look believable standing in front of him. There’s nothing worse than a casual fan seeing someone standing in front of someone and laugh.”
He continued, “I got to be able to stand in front of all of them and look equally well against them, especially in the gym. I have to make sure that my intensity is up in the ring. It was always good but even more (than that) because he’s very intense in the ring. Paul Heyman on the microphone is one of the best of all time so I had to be able to verbalize myself. That’s what I use the cannibalization of what I saw as the No. 1 scenario in wrestling, and that was intended to be the No. 1 guy. That pushed me forward. The fact that (the) thing I used years ago as an extra motivation is actually materializing right now. The fact that I did go face to face with Brock a few weeks ago in Brooklyn and people didn’t laugh. Instead, they gasped and went, “Oh, my God, he’s looking down at Brock.” I was imagining, framing and preparing for this moment, as that would be the ideal situation. The ideal situation is happening, and it’s happening in WrestleMania for the WWE title.”
In the past, Drew McIntyre has been open about how helpful Brock Lesnar has been throughout this entire Road to WrestleMania. Read his comments here.