In January’s WWE Men’s Royal Rumble, 26 competitors had already been tossed over the top rope, leaving just a final four. On one side of the ring stood Cody Rhodes and CM Punk, the good guys in this sweaty morality tale.
And on the other side of the ring were the hulking figures of Drew McIntyre and Gunther: decorated WWE champions, dastardly villains and, as it happens, a Rangers and a Rapid Vienna fan respectively, with football in their blood.
The worlds of WWE and football are colliding with increasing frequency.
When Ivan Toney came back from his eight-month ban, Brentford heralded his return with the Undertaker’s iconic gong and theme song reverberating around the Gtech Community stadium. The Dead Man himself appeared just last week in Saudi Arabia to unveil the Riyadh Season Cup trophy.
Arsenal regularly re-enter the field for the second half to wrestling theme tunes. Wayne Rooney and Jose Mourinho are among the football personalities to have made cameos on WWE programming. During England’s preparation for the Euro 2020 semi-final against Denmark, footage emerged of Declan Rice and Mason Mount imitating wrestler Edge while delivering his trademark spear to an inflatable shark.
Recovery mode: 🔛 pic.twitter.com/P6oEmxWtSU
— England (@England) July 4, 2021
It’s perhaps no surprise that wrestling and football crossover like this. The Premier League has followed WWE’s lead in becoming a sporting soap opera. Highly narrativised coverage frames English football as a cavalcade of controversy and a perpetual battle between rivals, heroes and villains.
Football is part of McIntyre’s heritage. “My great-great-grandfather played football for Ayr United,” explains the ‘Scottish Warrior’. “My grandfather on the maternal side also played to a high level. I think they always imagined I’d go into football, so wrestling came as a bit of a shock!”
Drew McIntyre on his way to compete in the Royal Rumble (WWE)
McIntyre grew up in a family divided between Rangers and Celtic. “It makes for some exciting group chats,” McIntyre tells The Athletic. “I always joke that, as a baby, they put out a Rangers shirt and a Celtic shirt and I must’ve crawled towards the Rangers one!”
He played football until his late teens, fancying himself as a David Beckham-esque dead-ball specialist — although his stature meant he was regularly coerced into playing at centre-back. His final football game illustrated why he was more suited to the confrontational world of WWE than football.
“This little guy tried to dribble round me and knocked himself out on my shoulder,” says McIntyre. “Idiot. I got the red card and went crazy, took my shirt off, and tried to fight the ref. It took a few managers and players to pull me off the pitch. I never went to my disciplinary hearing in the end. I’d been wrestling for about a year, so decided to pursue my main passion.”
McIntyre sees a parallel between Rangers’ recent revival and his own. “Rangers went down to the Third Division and I got fired from WWE, my dream job, not long after that,” he explains. “As I was finding my footing outside of the company, becoming the man and the wrestler I am today, Rangers were rising up the divisions.
“By the time they were finally back in the Scottish Premiership, winning the league to stop Celtic getting 10 titles in a row, I was back in WWE and had won the championship. We both rose together.”
McIntyre presented Rangers with a special commemorative WWE belt, which is still on display in the Ibrox trophy room. “I don’t get excited when I meet Hollywood actors or anything like that,” says McIntyre. “But the first time I met Ally McCoist, I was absolutely buzzing!”
Ally McCoist, breaking Celtic hearts in 1998 and inspiring wrestlers 26 years later (Chris Bacon – PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)
Austrian superstar Gunther grew up as a goalkeeper. “I played until I was 16,” he tells The Athletic. “My heroes were Austrian goalkeepers like Michael Konsel, Otto Konrad, and Alexander Manninger.
“Football was always part of my life. My mum played and she still coaches kids now. She went through a lot. Her team was an hour outside of Vienna. Apart from the big cities, Austria is a bit of a village — it can be quite conservative in terms of world views. So you can guess what it was like for a women’s football team in the mid-1990s. There were lots of comments from the outside. It was a struggle, but she was always very ambitious and tried to keep the team together.”
When Gunther moved to Germany, he began supporting Schalke in the Bundesliga. He keeps an eye on the Premier League and is optimistic about Austria’s participation in this summer’s European Championship. “David Alaba, Marko Arnautovic, Konrad Laimer, those are all guys who play for top clubs,” he says. “And now we have a great coach in Ralf Rangnick who can bring a different perspective.”
Is there a footballer that the ‘Ring General’ would compare to his wrestling style? “I would say someone like Paolo Maldini,” says Gunther. “Not a Cristiano Ronaldo, not a standout flashy superstar — that’s more Cody Rhodes. I’m someone who is a bit more quiet, does his job, and builds a good foundation for the team.”
Every time Liverpool concede a goal, there’s a buzz on JD McDonagh’s phone. “You think it’s just going to be the goal alert, but no,” he says wearily. “It’s Finn Balor, rubbing it in.”
“Every time,” admits Balor. “Just a little kissy emoji!”
Irishmen McDonagh and Balor are team-mates in the Judgment Day, a WWE stable, but rivals when it comes to football. McDonagh is a lifelong Liverpool fan, while Balor is devoted to Tottenham Hotspur.
“I had one of those Panini sticker books and I remember another boy telling me, ‘The best teams are Newcastle and Liverpool’,” says McDonagh. “Robbie Fowler had one of those airstrips across his nose and I thought he looked badass, so I chose Liverpool.”
Balor inherited his love of Spurs from his older brother and fell in love with the teams of Gary Lineker, Gary Mabbutt and Paul Gascoigne.
His distaste for Liverpool stems from a dislike of manager Jurgen Klopp. “Jurgen is such a bad influence for kids,” says Balor. “He has such a disregard for authority, like when he does his condescending thumbs up to the referees for what he considers a bad decision.” Anyone who’s witnessed Balor’s nefarious on-screen persona will be aware of a certain degree of hypocrisy.
Rapid Vienna fan Gunther aiming an airborne kick (WWE)
Balor and McDonagh follow their teams closely despite the WWE’s gruelling road schedule. “We don’t get a lot of sleep at the best of times,” explains McDonagh. “So setting an alarm and sacrificing an hour or two of sleep to wake up and watch the game on a laptop isn’t a huge hardship.”
McDonagh is not the only Liverpool fan on the WWE roster — fellow Irishman Sheamus is also a huge fan. Both are still processing the news that this will be Klopp’s last season.
“I woke up to it,” says Sheamus. “I saw it on Facebook. At first, I thought it was just clickbait.
“Everyone was in shock. But when you look at the bigger picture, he’s going to walk away an absolute legend. If you look at someone like Arsene Wenger, he was so successful at Arsenal but just overstayed his time. The way Klopp is loved at Anfield, I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up with a statue. Winning the club’s 20th league title would be some way to sign off.”
As a Spurs fan, Balor has learned to be slightly more philosophical about his team’s prospects. “I’m always positive and optimistic when it comes to Spurs, no matter how bad it gets,” he smiles. “I’ve got no choice: I’ve supported them since I was about seven years old and they’ve hardly won anything in that time!”
One of Balor’s fondest football memories came during Tottenham’s Champions League run of 2018-19. “We were on tour at the SSE Arena in Belfast,” he says. “I’d just gotten out of the ring. I ran into the kitchen area where the catering lads had it (the match against Ajax) on their phones. So I’m in my wrestling gear dripping wet. My dad, my brother and his son had driven up to Belfast, so I grabbed them out of the crowd. We all ran back to the catering kitchen and we were watching it just jumping around like mad when Lucas Moura scored the two goals at the end.”
Balor went on to attend the final in Madrid. “I didn’t watch the highlights for years,” he admits. “I’d been so traumatised by the game that I blocked it out of my mind.”
One positive from the weekend was Balor’s engagement to sports journalist Vero Rodriguez. Unfortunately, she’s an Arsenal fan. What’s it like being married to someone who supports the other team in north London? “Hell on Earth!” laughs Balor.
JD McDonagh, a Liverpool fan (WWE)
That said, Balor is enjoying the new-look Tottenham under Ange Postecoglou — even if the blow of losing Harry Kane was a bitter pill to swallow. “That day I was so upset I went and bought a new car to make myself feel better,” Balor says.
For all three of Balor, McDonagh and Sheamus, it has been thrilling to see how the intensity of Premier League crowds has begun to infiltrate the WWE.
Balor fondly recalls the first tour for NXT UK, a WWE spin-off brand designed to develop British talent. “That was when football fan energy entered into my wrestling universe — that British crowd with their chants, songs and the passion that they bring. They were substituting the names of wrestlers into football chants. I remember Blackpool, especially, was bananas.
“People often ask me, ‘What’s your most memorable night in wrestling?’. One of them was NXT Takeover in London in 2015 when it was me against Samoa Joe. It just had such a football fan atmosphere. I loved it.”
“The Premier League is the best league in the world because of the atmosphere,” says Sheamus. “It’s because of the fans, they’re the ones who make it so intoxicating.
“When we tour the UK, for me everything is about football. When I was in Leeds, I gave the fans a load of stick because at the time they were in the Championship. In Sheffield, I stuck it to the Wednesday fans.
“In Manchester, I sang You’ll Never Walk Alone to the loudest chorus of boos you’ll ever hear in your life.”
Sheamus recalls another time performing in Manchester with his former tag-team partner, Cesaro. “We used to wear these jackets,” explains Sheamus. “I said to him, ‘Bro, I know how we can really rile them up’. We put Liverpool kits on underneath our jackets, so no one could see. Then when we got to the ring, we opened the jackets and everybody lost their mind. They were throwing bottles and everything. It was crazy.”
The Judgment Day wrestlers are known for their purple ring attire and merchandise. Fortunately for McDonagh, Liverpool have released a purple third kit and although he’s not yet found an excuse to wear it to the ring, he does say he’s been “wearing it religiously”.
For the European wrestlers, talking about football provides a connection to home — and the source of plenty of locker-room banter. “Sheamus likes to pretend he’s a Celtic fan, sometimes publicly, just to annoy me,” says Rangers supporter McIntyre. “Don’t listen to him, he’s a filthy liar.”
Sheamus at WWE Smackdown (WWE)
“They’re just the words of a man who’s bitter,” responds Sheamus. “He says that because Rangers are absolute garbage at the moment.”
Sheamus has been to see Liverpool play at Anfield, but to get his fix of live football, he is also a season ticket holder at MLS side Nashville.
Balor has even acted as a Premier League missionary, converting others on the WWE roster. “A lot of the American lads don’t understand the tier system of English football,” he explains. “Angelo Dawkins from the Street Profits is a huge sports fan. Two years ago, he had no idea about our football. I explained to him the tier system and then he got into watching football.
“I made him pick a team and he wasn’t allowed to pick from the top four. He picked Fulham, so he’s a Fulham fan now and he’s really into it!”
These are interesting times for WWE. In September 2023, it was acquired by sports and entertainment group Endeavour and merged with UFC under TKO Holdings. Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has returned to the company as a member of the board and on-screen performer. WWE has signed a long-term broadcast deal with Netflix worth more than $5billion (£4bn).
But the company has also been rocked by a lawsuit accusing TKO’s executive chairman Vince McMahon of sexual assault. McMahon resigned the next day, with WWE president Nick Khan assuring staff in an internal memo that “he will no longer have a role with TKO Group Holdings or WWE”.
WWE’s emphasis, unsurprisingly, is on the start of a new era.
At a time when football’s presentation seems to lean ever more towards entertainment, WWE is now embracing a more UFC-influenced ‘sports-like’ presentation. It hired Lee Fitting, a long-time ESPN executive who oversaw production on Monday Night Football and College Gameday, as its new head of media and production.
“We do these shots of us arriving at the arena now,” explains JD McDonagh. “It’s just like the Premier League players getting off the bus.”
WWE’s chief content officer — and declared West Ham fan — Paul Levesque (otherwise known as ‘Triple H’, a 14-time WWE world champion) has been credited with helping oversee this evolution in presentation.
“Levesque has done a great job at showcasing what we do physically again to an audience that had forgotten a bit about that,” adds former Olympic wrestler Chad Gable. “We’d gotten so storytelling-centric that maybe some of the athleticism had fallen by the wayside.”
The reporting around wrestling is beginning to resemble conventional sports coverage. The emergence of rival promotion All Elite Wrestling (AEW), backed by Fulham owner Tony Khan, has created intrigue around contracts and free agency. At the Royal Rumble, WWE handed a debut to Jade Cargill, previously of AEW. Her arrival was greeted with all the fanfare of a Premier League blockbuster summer signing.
Jade Cargill, the WWE’s big-money signing (WWE)
“It’s a massive, massive coup for WWE,” says Sheamus. “She’s a great person and looks like something out of a comic book.”
The presence of a potential competitor in AEW has seen many wrestling fans pick a side. “That’s one negative thing wrestling shares with football,” says McDonagh. “There’s a lot of tribalism. With fans, it becomes an ‘us against them’ mentality.”
“As an athlete, you just love what you’re doing. You love the sport. You love the 90 minutes on the pitch — or the 20 minutes in the ring — that you get out there. And then when it’s over, you see another person that loves it the same as you do. So there’s no animosity there. But there is a lot of that with the fans.”
The wrestlers can look forward to more international crowds in 2024. Elimination Chamber is live from Perth, Australia, on Saturday, February 24 on the WWE Network in the UK and Peacock in the United States. WWE has more big European shows with football-savvy crowds on the horizon: Backlash is set for Lyon in May, as well as August’s Bash in Berlin.
For the football fans in WWE’s locker room, there’s another important date on the horizon. “We’re all looking forward to the 2026 World Cup,” says McDonagh. “We might even get to a couple of games!”
(Top photo: WWE)
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