Why Eli Drake Turned Down Offers From WWE

Eli Drake recently appeared on Steve Austin’s podcast and here are the highlights:

On turning down WWE several times: “There’s been interest from WWE for the last three years, but I kept turning them down because Impact kept giving me raises, so I was just like, which maybe in the long term might not have been the best move only because your up potential in WWE is so crazy. Just the money people are making from the Saudi shows or whatever, or now with AEW and what not people are starting to get more money out of that too, but it was the point where it was like three years in a row I kind of rang their bell and then turned away and went somewhere else, I probably annoyed the shit out of them at this point.”

On interest from AEW and ROH: “AEW, there was interest there, we had kind of a deal worked out, but that ended up falling through, and then I talked to Ring of Honor, I talked to NWA.”

On why he decided to join NWA: “The most appealing offer I had was NWA with Billy Corgan and David Lagana. At this point, its got such a buzz, obviously it’s brand new, who knows where it’s gonna go, what it’s going to do. It’s on YouTube now, I know a lot of people look down at that, but at the same time, it’s accessible anywhere, at anytime, to everybody. Maybe that seems a little low rent in some sense, but I actually think it’s kind of rock and roll, which is exactly what Billy is. He’s always done things his way, as he says, he innovates in the space he is given, and I think that that’s the way to go. And right now, I’m just loving what we’re doing at NWA. Now whether that means that I stay there and make that place the best place it could possibly be, or somebody comes along with an offer, at the end of the day, I’m a businessman and I’m my own business, so anything is possible, it all depends on what’s on the table, but at this point, my main focus is NWA because it’s hot, it’s the only different thing to me that I see going in wrestling today, everything else kind of resembles each other, and we’re the one thing that looks very, incredibly different, and feels different, and it’s vert character-driven, that’s what I like, I want to do character-driven stuff, that’s the whole reason I got in the business. So to me, it’s NWA at this point.”