Drew McIntyre won the 2020 Royal Rumble and will now head to WrestleMania 36 in Tampa, Florida, to challenge Brock Lesnar for the WWE Championship in the marquee match of wrestling's most prestigious event.
For McIntyre, it is the culmination of nearly two decades of work and the start of a main event push that should see him capture the title and become the face of the Raw brand for the foreseeable future.
But what does a post-WrestleMania WWE look like with The Scottish Psychopath on top of the flagship show?
What should fans expect with the new babyface competitor carrying the brand on his shoulders and, more importantly, which hurdles may he have to overcome to ensure his success in that role?
Over the last five years, the WWE Championship has been the title company officials have been slightly more liberal with when it comes to awarding it to fresh new faces. Dean Ambrose, AJ Styles, Bray Wyatt, Jinder Mahal and Kofi Kingston all rocketed to the top of the card with their WWE title wins, and while it is admirable that the creative team would utilize that particular title to begin the ascent of those men to the top of the industry, it also puts them in a position to nurture and maintain a project.
A Drew McIntyre championship win at WrestleMania would leave the writing team with another project it must oversee.
The Scottish Psychopath has competed against the top stars in the industry, in some fairly high-profile matches, but has never been the guy in WWE. He has yet to experience what it feels like to be champion, the pressure that comes with it and the expectations that await him.
From a creative standpoint, the writing team will be faced with legitimizing him through wins, cementing his status as one of the top stars on Raw via matches and angles that keep fans engaged and invested, and using the talent around him to better him and ensure fans buy into him in that role.
It is never easy.
Wyatt failed in his first run as champion because WWE Creative never made him the priority. He was a secondary player in his own title programs. Mahal faced credibility issues that the writing team never solved. Kingston suffered from a lack of star-studded opposition to build his reign against.
There is a fine line between success and failure when it comes to the handling of a first-time champion, and McIntyre, as well as the Raw creative staff, is about to find out whether they can remain on the right side of it.
Since returning to WWE in 2017, there is no denying that McIntyre's in-ring work is infinitely better than it was when he left the company in 2014.
His aggressive, intense and explosive in-ring style matches the physically imposing performer he has developed into in that span. He looks the part of badass Scot and, thanks to the evolution of his in-ring work, he wrestles like one, too.
The most beneficial element of his skill set, especially as he embarks on his first real main event opportunity, is his adaptability. McIntyre is fast, agile and can work with the smaller competitors on the roster. He will not look out of place squaring off with someone like Rey Mysterio, Ricochet or Andrade.
He can also brawl, throwing fists and cracking heads with his Glasgow Kiss against the bigger, more punishing competitors on the roster. He will not look out of place going blow-for-blow with Samoa Joe or powering down AOP.
It is his adaptability and his history of working with the likes of Kurt Angle, Will Ospreay, PJ Black, Moose, Jack Evans and Cody Rhodes while away from WWE that helped him prepare for the moment.
At least in terms of being able to carry the company from an in-ring perspective.
Given the wealth of talent on the Raw brand, including "The Monday Night Messiah" Seth Rollins, AJ Styles and Kevin Owens to name a few, fans should expect a consistently excellent run between the ropes, if nothing else.
One of the biggest issues facing McIntyre's potential run as champion is the lack of quality heels for him to work opposite.
Brock Lesnar is a part-time worker who returns for the high-profile events before disappearing again, we know that. Beyond The Beast, there are really only three credible main event heels on the Raw roster for McIntyre to work with, something that could breed repetition over time.
AJ Styles, Randy Orton and Seth Rollins would prove to be the most realistic opposition for WWE champion McIntyre. The problem being, fans have already been exposed to the Rollins-McIntyre match far more than they would care to admit. It was against The Architect that McIntyre enjoyed his first real, elongated program on the main roster following his run with NXT.
Styles is a competitor against whom McIntyre has worked here and there recently, but never in any sort of sustained program. The Phenomenal One has a long history of elevating the game of his opponents, bringing them to his level and having consistently strong matches. From an in-ring perspective, that would do wonders for McIntyre.
Unfortunately, it would also prove too much of the same old, same old once creative began booking multi-man tag matches also involving Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson.
The most intriguing option is Orton, who is delivering one of the finest performances of his Hall of Fame career as a heel. The manner in which he has manipulated the crowd following his shocking betrayal of Edge has led to some of the most passionate heat from fans we have witnessed in years, and if he can maintain that level of performance through WrestleMania and his program with The Rated R Superstar, The Viper will be the perfect first challenger for McIntyre.
Furthermore, Orton could well use his knack for getting heat to build McIntyre into an even stronger babyface, something WWE Creative would benefit from exponentially as it tries to cement him in that role.
Again, though, the lack of depth beyond that raises the question: How sustainable is a McIntyre title run with only three real options to choose from on the heel side of things and no guarantee fans will not become bored by the same matches every month?
History tells us the WWE Universe will grow bored of, and ultimately lash out against, a babyface champion.
The pattern began with the ascension of John Cena to WWE champion back in 2005. Despite being an edgy, sarcastic, charismatic rapper who the fans seemingly hand-picked to be the guy in WWE, they quickly grew tired of the babyface overcoming the odds to retain his title and rejected him.
They booed Cena in arenas around the world for years. So much so that the heroic babyface began using the fans' disdain as part of the act.
Ditto Roman Reigns after him and, more recently, Seth Rollins.
All three of those men rode fan support to the top of the card, only to have the audience turn on them once they were firmly entrenched there.
There are two reasons for that.
First, the creative team's inability to create a multidimensional babyface has left fans unenamored by the white-meat good guy who champions morality, fights against the forces of evil, overcomes the odds and emerges victoriously. They do not want a rah-rah champion who panders to crowds and neglects everything about their personality that made them such fan-favorites in the first place.
They want Batman, not Superman. They demand hearty characters, not vanilla abstracts.
Until WWE Creative can resist the urge to strip away everything about these characters in order to make them some smiling, monotonous hero in the image of Cena, babyfaces will continue to falter and, ultimately, fail to become the breakout success and enormous star Vince McMahon so desperately needs right now.
When imaging a post-WrestleMania 36 with McIntyre as champion, fans must ready themselves for the unknown. After all, history dictates there is no guarantee The Scottish Psychopath will ever hold the WWE Championship again.
Ambrose, Mahal, Kingston, Kevin Owens and Finn Balor are all Superstar who won their first world titles in WWE over the last half-decade but have never returned to that position on the card for one reason or another.
Injuries and creative issues have kept them from ever returning to the height of their wrestling careers, leaving fans to wonder what went wrong and how things may have been different if only this had happened or that had gone their way.
McIntyre, though he has the in-ring skills to be a multiple-time champion and the look of a bona fide Superstar, has experienced the creative inconsistencies that can derail a push. He has seen him star overshadowed by Shane freaking McMahon, been a tackling dummy for the more heavily pushed Roman Reigns and watched others get opportunity after opportunity ahead of him.
He knows there is no guarantee that this type of push will ever present itself again, regardless of how hard he works. Unfortunately, his success at this level is not merely a reflection of his own hard work but the cumulative efforts of many.
If the writing team pens one angle or vignette that doesn't hit, or McIntyre has one off-night on a live episode of Raw or a major pay-per-view, his sustainability as a main event performer could be decided before he ever truly gets a chance to prove himself.
Thus leaving adding his name to the long list of Superstars who have tasted gold, never to eat at that table again.
