Ever since John Cena shifted to a part-time role in WWE, the company has been finding it hard to make a new top star. Roman Reigns got the meteoric push as the face of the company as the whole programming was built around him form 2015 to 2018. Since his miraculous return in 2019 after battling Leukaemia, he has been pushed down the pecking order as he spent the whole of 2019 feuding in lame mid-card rivalries. Even Drew McIntyre knocked him out of the Royal Rumble to win it this year.
However, if rumours are to be believed, his time in the main event’s scene is not far away as he is going to face The Fiend for the Universal Championship at WrestleMania 36 in April this year.
However, WWE Hall of Famer and Raw commentator, Jerry Lawler has another wrestler in mind as the face of the company. He was recently at The Steve Austin Show, where he said that he wants to see Drew McIntyre as ‘the guy’ and the face of WWE for years to come.
He was full of praises for the 2020 Royal Rumble winner and thinks that he could be the next big thing in wrestling.
“[Drew McIntyre] loves the business. He really does and he is excited to be where he is right now.I think he could be the guy. We all know that they have been looking for somebody since John Cena and they tried so hard with Roman Reigns. And, of course, Roman’s over big and he is probably as good as anybody that they pushed to that extent, but I still think there is room. He is not John Cena. He is not ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin. He is not a Rock yet. And they are looking for that type of personality and I really think just in being around him and watching him – I mean, he looks fantastic – I really think he could be the guy.”
Drew McIntyre is having the time of his life right now as he is scheduled to challenge Brock Lesnar for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 36 this year.
During the same podcast, Jerry Lawler also talked about Raw under the new management of Paul Heyman. He revealed that Heyman is giving the wrestlers the chance to come up with stuff for their character and allowing them the space to express themselves.
“Now that Paul Heyman is sort of in charge of RAW, it is so much not the characters that are being predetermined by the writers or creative. They are giving the guys a chance to be themselves just like [Austin was] back when [Austin] became ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin. Nobody was telling you, ‘oh, this is how it [has] got to be.’ [Austin was himself] and [he] was given that opportunity and [Austin] took it.”
Austin acknowledged this and said that when the wrestlers are micromanaged by people, they become robots, which is not good for the business.
“When you have got somebody micromanaging you and telling you every single thing to do, you kind of turn into a robot and you think, ‘am I doing this right? Am I doing this wrong? Am I screwing this up?'” Austin added, “you are too much in your head.”
Seems like the better sense has finally prevailed in the backstage management and we can see the result on TV as Raw is now far more watchable than it used to be. Hopefully, somebody will do the same thing in SmackDown as well and we don’t have to see a 20-minute Baron Corbin promo about dog food every week.
