WWE Royal Rumble: Are Losses Building To A Big Moment For Drew McIntyre?
Drew McIntyre is among the favorites to win the WWE Royal Rumble this year, but he heads into the 30-man battle royal with a spotty win-loss record.
Ever since he was called up to the main roster from NXT on the episode of Raw after WrestleMania 34, Drew McIntyre has been positioned as a future Universal Champion. Michael Cole makes a point of saying this on commentary frequently, McIntyre embarrassed WWE Hall of Famer Kurt Angle with his own move, and it took months for the Scottish Psychopath to be pinned.
All of this points to McIntyre being one of the favorites at the WWE Royal Rumble this Sunday, as he joins the likes of Seth Rollins as likely candidates to outlast the competition in the Men’s Rumble match, which is just as hard to predict as ever.
McIntyre is a monster who rarely loses in singles competition, but WWE’s best efforts to protect him in multi-man matches have caused him to come up short in some big matches. Fightful.com’s Sean Ross Sapp has an excellent weekly feature looking at some of the stats in WWE, and he noted that McIntyre’s only win in the past two months was against rival Dolph Ziggler.
That’s striking, especially since Ziggler, while an Intercontinental Champion and Raw Tag Team Champion with McIntyre last year, is still generally seen as a wrestler who should easily be beaten by main-event stars. The story with Ziggler and McIntyre was that McIntyre used Ziggler to get to the top of Raw, propped him up, and then cut bait when his “lesser” partner was no longer of use to him.
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So while McIntyre had no trouble disposing of Ziggler in a steel cage match to finish their feud, he’s failed to deal with the top babyfaces on Raw. Finn Balor defeated McIntyre at TLC, and Seth Rollins pinned McIntyre following “The Stomp” on Raw’s go-home show before the Rumble.
In total, McIntyre has a 2-8 record since December, and while most of those losses were multi-man or tag matches, it says something that McIntyre has been unable to get past Rollins and Balor.
This Sunday, Balor has a huge opportunity to win the Universal Championship off of Brock Lesnar, become the title’s second two-time winner, and cement himself as the next top star on Raw. Meanwhile, Rollins is the overwhelming favorite to win the Men’s Rumble match, both because of his brilliance in 2018 and because of a potential Universal Title match with Lesnar at WrestleMania 35 (should Balor fail in his efforts earlier on Sunday).
McIntyre has been on a bit of a cold streak in comparison, missing out on the biggest opportunities, such as the Fatal Four-Way that determined Lesnar’s challenger at the Rumble. Again, that’s more because WWE wants to protect McIntyre from singles losses while still building up their babyfaces on Raw, but there’s still an interesting backstory here.
When McIntyre lost to Rollins before the Rumble, we saw him seething in the ring, equally frustrated and embarrassed with the loss. The match itself was yet another fiery back-and-forth between two of Raw’s best wrestlers, but McIntyre just didn’t have the answer to Rollins’s quickness and craftiness.
From calling out John Cena to destroying Dolph Ziggler with Claymore after Claymore, Drew McIntyre has consistently showed the WWE Universe that he is not a man to mess with. But after we were so accustomed to seeing McIntyre grab wins, it’s rather jarring to see him lose back-to-back singles matches to Finn and Seth in big spots.
Perhaps it’s WWE’s way of throwing a curveball at us. McIntyre’s losses haven’t seemed to hurt him at all, because fans still perceive him as a threat and Raw’s top heel. The losses, however, have served their dual purpose of boosting his opponents and maybe getting fans to overlook McIntyre a little bit.
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The outcome of Lesnar vs. Balor will give us a clue as to whether a face or heel will win the Rumble, but though the signs point to a Rollins victory, there are enough clues to suggest that McIntyre could be headed for his big win. A match against John Cena, whom he injured (in kayfabe) and has insulted at every turn, at WrestleMania 35 is most likely, but McIntyre remains a key man to watch at Sunday’s WWE Royal Rumble Pay Per View.