Eli Drake Says He’s Used Five Percent of Promos Written for Him, Talks Why He Won’t Return to NXT Right Now, Drew McIntyre’s Success

GFW star Eli Drake recently spoke with Hidden Remote and below are some interview highlights:

If he would return to NXT (he worked there in 2013-2014):

“I will say it’s an option, an option that’s been spoken about. Right now, the time is not right and the offer is not right. I’m enjoying where I am and the freedom I have. I’m getting paid at least decently where I am, so I’ve been enjoying that. There have been options to move on. Without saying too much, nothing that has compelled me enough to leave. Fortunately, I’ve formed strong relationships within the company I’m in, so who knows what the future holds. At this point, my goal is to make GFW as big as it possibly can be, along with the 30 or 40 people alongside me. I’m not so much focused on competing with WWE, but if we can start to be in the same conversation as far as getting on that level and getting more eyes on us. I’m not worried about going there or anything else like that. To me, a bigger success than going to WWE would be doubling this company’s reach, tripling its reach, quadrupling its reach. That would be a bigger success for me than ever going anywhere else. To go from the depths we were at a couple of years ago with people saying we were going out of business and whatnot to bounce back and bring it back up would be much more incredible than anything I can do over there.”

Cutting his own promos:

“I think it’s so funny when people hand me a written promo. I’ve gone to small independent companies and had people hand me a promo written to my catchphrase and say, ‘What is this crap?’ I’ll be 100 percent honest, any time I’ve been given a promo, I’ve used three to five percent of it, which is usually what are the bullet points, what’s the direction I’m going in, what points do I need to get across, what am I putting over, and that’s it. No offense to anyone, but some of the stuff is kind of lame and I feel I can frame it better. I don’t mean that with any disrespect, I’m sure there’s someone who is a better performer than me that maybe could have delivered it better than I could. What I was being written didn’t work with what I was bringing.”

Drew McIntyre’s success:

“It’s hard to narrow it down to just that. Knowing him personally, I know he was in a different town every night if not every week. It was really crazy watching his schedule because he’d be in Europe, he’d be in Australia, he’d be somewhere. I think that was keeping him visible, but of course, he was on our TV every week and killing it, so I think that part almost gave him a lot of legitimacy in a lot of people’s eyes, but it was also a lot of indie dates too, so you can’t take that away from him. Honestly, after that time in 3MB, and I didn’t see too much of it, but from what I saw, he was a complete joke. Now, at least two of the three of them have seemed to rise to something. Jinder [Mahal] is now WWE champion and Drew’s in contention for the NXT Championship. So yeah, his dates with Impact and his work on the indies made him more great, a serious contender and not that jokey 3MB B.S. he was doing.”