When Drew McIntyre‘s initial run in WWE came to an end almost a decade ago, few expected him to eventually rise to the top of the industry and become a world champion in the biggest company in professional wrestling.

So what changed? Well, McIntyre, McIntyre changed.

Sitting down for an interview with Good Karma Wrestling, McIntyre discussed how he was able to redefine himself as a performer away from WWE and how the concept has practically become a verb inside of the promotion for the process of going from undesirable to undeniable on the indies, to paraphrase another WWE-to-indie guy made good, Cody Rhodes.

“I hope they are inspired. From what I gather, the company literally tells people, ‘Do a Drew.' My brother once said, ‘You've become a verb.' You have to go out there and reinvent yourself, grow your brand, and make yourself more valuable. I believe that's the advice that the company literally gives people and some of the Superstars that are released and come to me to ask for advice. Hopefully, they'll look at the template of what I did. When I left, the model was usually take that WWE character, take it around the world, get paid X amount, the second time around you'll make a little less, and finally you'll find a wage that you'll stop on, and that will be your wage, and hopefully one day you will make it back to WWE. My business mindset was, ‘That's terrible business sense.' I'm absolutely not doing that, I'm going to reinvent myself, I'm going to show what I can truly do. Social media is becoming really big, which it was becoming huge in 2014. I can take everyone around the world with me on my journey, and I'm really going to reinvent what it means to be an independent wrestler,” Drew McIntyre told Good Karma Wrestling via Fightful.

“Thankfully, a lot of people believed in me, gave me a lot of opportunities, a lot of platforms to show what I can do, and I really succeeded, and everybody can follow that. The next guy was Cody Rhodes, and he had his own version, which led to the creation of another company. You watch Matt Cardona now, while Cody and I eventually kind of went to the TV level, Matt's been able to keep it at an independent level but really become super popular, super successful. And he has carny in him that I never truly had.”

While WWE has plenty of success stories, sometimes, a performer needs to take the wrestling education they earned in the developmental system and marry it with their own creativity in order to become something truly special. McIntyre accomplished that feat, and hopefully, some of the other recently-released performers will “Do a Drew,” too.

Matt Cardona reveals if he would rejoin Drew McIntyre in WWE.

Speaking of Matt Cardona, who is the current “Do a Drew” success story of independent wrestling, he recently sat down for an interview with Fightful, where he discussed his past, present, and potential future in WWE, where fans would love to see him return once more alongside his wife, Chelsea Green.

What, Fightful asked, would it take for Cardona to rejoin Drew McIntyre in WWE? It's simple really: Cash and creative.

“Listen, if I get a phone call right now, of course, I'd pick it up, and we'd have a conversation,” Matt Cardona told Fightful. “I'd be lying if I said I never wanted to wrestle at Madison Square Garden again or wrestle at WrestleMania again, but for right now, I'm having the time of my life, I'm having so much fun, I'm making so much money. What would it take? Cash and creative, you know? There's no guarantees in wrestling, but I'd need some intention, you know what I'm saying? I don't just want to be another guy on the roster, been there and done that, and nothing against that, but I did that. I'm over it.”

Would it be weird to see Matt Cardona return to WWE as the character he's crafted over the past half-decade on the indies? Sure thing, but then again, it's not unprecedented to see a performer leave as one character and return as their true self, as fans can recall from the likes of Razor Ramone/Scott Hall and even Cody Rhodes, who was last seen as Stardust before he forged the “American Nightmare” character on his own in church basements and bingo halls – not to mention as an EVP of AEW – around the world. If Cardona wants to bring his Indy God character to WWE and play up his time away as a transformative experience, and Paul “Triple H” Levesque is into it, why not, right?