Drew McIntyre made headlines this week for two reasons; he was unexpectedly pulled from Friday’s WWE SmackDown episode, and his contract is set to run out.
As PWMania.com previously reported, a health issue forced McIntyre to miss SmackDown and a scheduled signing. It was also revealed that McIntyre is dissatisfied with the creative and pay WWE has offered him on his next contract. The two parties are still a long way from reaching an agreement on financial terms.
According to Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful Select, McIntyre’s contract has about nine months left on it.
While talking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer noted that McIntyre’s contract expires later this year and has nothing to do with being dropped from SmackDown. He added that he had heard McIntyre was only slightly injured.
Meltzer said, “No, I think he’s banged up…..is that what they said that he had an illness on TV? Okay, whatever it is was before WrestleMania because he worked through WrestleMania and the WrestleMania match and whatever the situation is. The injury, banged up, or whatever it is. Getting through and doing WrestleMania and now, I don’t know how long he’s going to be out. That’s the situation and then there’s the other situation, which we’ve talked about, the contract situation, which is not related to this, but it’s gotten out this week. That’s legit too in the sense they’re not close on money. It’s a long ways away. I hear people say, ‘Oh, he’s going to be at the [August 27th AEW] Wembley show.’ And it’s like, I don’t have the date, but I don’t think that’s contractually possible. I think that his contract runs well past that date. It’s a story to play out, but it’s not going to play out this week or next week.”
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
