Andrew Ravens
Drew McIntyre’s third WWE Championship reign lasted just 56 days, ending with Jacob Fatu‘s interference on the March 6 edition of SmackDown that allowed Cody Rhodes to reclaim the title. It was a brief run with a single successful defense — a victory over Sami Zayn at the Royal Rumble — but McIntyre has no complaints about how it played out.
Speaking with Chris Van Vliet on a new episode of Insight, he explained why he believes the shakeup was exactly what the road to WrestleMania 42 needed. “Awesome. Nobody saw it coming, for one,” McIntyre said. “I think everybody assumed that the Cody Express would keep moving forward.”
McIntyre made it clear that his assessment of Rhodes is positive. He acknowledged that Rhodes is a great performer and WWE Champion and that his momentum coming out was undeniable. But McIntyre felt that Rhodes’ run at the top had started to feel predictable, and that a sudden title loss was the kind of jolt that could reinvigorate both the championship picture and Rhodes himself.
“My hearing is not great these days, but I could hear the crowd,” McIntyre said. “I could hear the response. I could see the response when I won in Berlin. And it put Cody in a position where he had to chase. Gave Cody a bit of that edge back, which, in my opinion, he desperately needed.
“For me, it gave me some of that legitimacy. ‘Oh yeah, Drew can win the big one.'”
McIntyre heads into WrestleMania 42 not as WWE Champion but with an unsanctioned brawl against Jacob Fatu on the card. It will be his eighth consecutive year competing at WrestleMania, a streak that speaks to his consistency as one of WWE’s most relied-upon performers over the past several years. Rhodes, meanwhile, enters his fifth WrestleMania main event in four years defending the title against Randy Orton.
