Drew McIntyre On Triple H Letting Him Attend ICW Hall of Fame Induction

In an interview with The Mirror, Drew McIntyre spoke about how Triple H made his ICW Hall of Fame induction possible. Here are highlights:

On his ICW Hall of Fame induction: “I’m friends obviously with Mark Dallas the promoter and a couple of the lads were with him and they just messaged me to let me know. They said ‘we’re going to put you into the Hall of Fame at the upcoming Fight Club tapings, the biggest one ever, and we just want to recognise what you’ve done for the company and done for Scottish wrestling’. It really meant the world to me, I didn’t know what to say. I’ve won a lot of titles and they were very big moments, but this is personally very special to me. After they actually sent it I contacted Triple H and told him about it and he personally endorsed me going. The reason I’m going is because Triple H believes in ICW and was very happy for me. Receiving this opportunity, he told me, ‘you should go there and be there in person’. That’s the reason i’m going to be there. To go there and be in person, when initially it was just going to be done on the show as a little tribute without me there, really does mean the world. I’m going to be going home, in my home company and with all my friends on the show and in the crowd, with my family there. You can’t buy that kind of stuff.”

On being acknowledged by his peers: “Yeah, I said on Twitter as well, it means more to me than anything else to have those things said by your peers, the ones who see all the hard work that goes in. The crowd are somewhat aware, they see on social media, but they don’t see the work that goes on backstage. Those guys saying that means the world. And I want them to know it’s not just been me, those guys were the catalyst to get things going in certain areas and that’s awesome. We’ve done this as a team and that’s what I want this to be about. This isn’t a night of celebrating Drew, I want this to be a night of celebrating Scottish wrestling. When I started 17 years ago there wasn’t any Scottish wrestling, it didn’t exist. I used to travel for 12 hours to learn to wrestle when i was 15. Then we started the Scottish wrestling scene. Mark Dallas started ICW. Then when I went away, the BBC documentary happened, Grado happened, it started getting going and we had 1,500 people on my return. We all worked together, we all busted our butts, I taught them what I could from the TV perspective, the things I learned in America, and together we grew to over 6,000 people at the Hydro, with the biggest independent show of all time. We did this together, we’ve known each other since we were kids and it’s absolutely wild that I’m going in the Hall of Fame at 32-years-old.”

On Johnny Gargano vs. Andrade Almas: “What can you say? One of the best matches I’ve ever seen. Just when you thought it was over they took it to another level and another level. It was incredible. Johnny Gargano is someone I’ve known for years – we’ve been EVOLVE Tag Team Champions together, we’ve wrestled each other many times over the years. Almas is somebody who came in with all the talent in the world and wasn’t quite reaching his potential. We started wrestling at live events and televised shows and I thought ‘this guy has got something’ and then they introduced Zelina Vega and she brought something out of him that wasn’t there before. He took it to the next level and started reach that potential. I don’t want to make excuses, he’s an incredible athlete, but it took dirty tactics and my bicep coming off for him to beat me! If you take two guys as good as they are, put them in the main event of a platform like NXT TakeOver, they are going to give you magic. But they gave us more than magic that night and I was very proud to be part of NXT, because that’s what it’s all about, stealing the show from Raw and SmackDown.”