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Drew McIntyre Almost Injured Major AEW Star With Botched Claymore

By Monika Thapa • Published Oct 29, 2025 15:30 EDT

Drew McIntyre’s Claymore is one of the deadliest moves in WWE, which knocks the lights out of his opponents in the ring. But one time, he almost seriously injured an AEW star.

Speaking on The Rich Eisen Show, Drew McIntyre revealed that he once hit AEW star Samoa Joe with a botched Claymore Kick during a WWE Royal Rumble match. He added Joe didn’t get mad at him for hurting him, but he felt guilty about it.

He said, “I caught Samoa Joe really bad during the Royal Rumble. To be fair he didn’t say anything, he’s like a man’s man. He just pulled me aside and let me know, ‘Hey brother, you really caught me badly.’ I felt so guilty because you know Joe’s my boy, he’s my brother. There are a few guys I have caught real hard that I didn’t feel so guilty about, but most of the time people are good, but I felt really bad about the one to Joe.”

Joe had a stint in WWE from 2015 to 2022, where he became a 3-time NXT Champion and a 2-time WWE United States Champion. He also won the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic with Finn Bálor in 2015. WWE released him on January 6, 2022. A few months later, he ended up in Tony Khan’s AEW.

Drew McIntyre Was Pitched To Play The Character of A Model In WWE

Drew McIntyre recently had an interview with the No-Contest Wrestling podcast, where he revealed that the head of Talent Relations in 2007, John Laurinaitis, had pitched an idea where he’d have to play the character of a model called ‘The Runway Man.’ However, the idea never materialized because Vince McMahon scrapped it.

I remember he pitched to me John Laurinaitis was Head of Talent Relations at the time, and telling me, you know, at Florida Championship Wrestling, which was there prior to NXT, we know today, the original developmental, and he built it up. He built it up. I was listening to him describe the character and thought, ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no.’ And then he went, ‘The name, The Runway Man, you’re going to have your own model runway and you’re going to walk down like a model, and my goodness.’
Like I was picturing in my head, basically all my dreams were going to hell. The life’s worth of a Scotsman signed from Scotland. It was all going down the toilet. The next meeting after Johnny was to go to Vince [McMahon] himself and pitch this idea. And I kind of sat silent, and Johnny pitched it to Vince. And I think Vince saw my face the whole time. And he just said, ‘What do you think?’ And I thought, ‘Whatever you need me to do, I’ll make it work.’
But I had my head down kind of the whole time. And I think he read me like he doesn’t want to do this. And thankfully, they let me play closer to myself. Uh, but I learned years later, it was nowhere close to myself because it took me till I returned to WWE after getting fired, which we’ll probably talk about. Uh, where I finally found myself as a wrestler and as a human.

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