Drew McIntyre’s status at WrestleMania 41 is no longer in doubt.
SmackDown General Manager Nick Aldis announced that Drew McIntyre versus Damian Priest is officially confirmed for WrestleMania 41. Aldis prefaced his announcement by saying he’ll deal with Randy Orton hitting him with (another) RKO in time, then made Priest vs. McIntyre official.
“Hello, it’s your SmackDown General Manager, Nick Aldis. There’s a lot to react to from last week’s episode of SmackDown, not the least of which being an RKO from Randy Orton. But, a social media video is certainly not the time and place for me to address that. Which is not to say that I won’t address that at some point. What I’m here to do now is make a match official for WrestleMania. I’m here to announce that Drew McIntyre will go one-on-one with Damian Priest at WrestleMania.”
BREAKING: #SmackDown GM @RealNickAldis has just made the following match OFFICIAL for #WrestleMania @DMcIntyreWWE vs. @ArcherOfInfamy pic.twitter.com/aEWpcHP6qr
— WWE WrestleMania (@WrestleMania) April 10, 2025
Why wasn’t Drew McIntyre vs. Damian Priest official beforehand?
Drew McIntyre’s status was in the air after he suffered an unfortunate injury during a backstage fight with Damian Priest on SmackDown two weeks ago. McIntyre did media rounds earlier this week while wearing an eyepatch, noting his WrestleMania match was about a “fight against time.”
McIntyre didn’t want to be dealing with this situation, but he told the It’s Called Soccer podcast that he’s thankful it wasn’t worse.
“It didn’t feel that bad, to be honest. I’ve never landed on a windshield before in my life, so they probably should have thrown me on the top of the car or on the concrete to hurt more,” he noted. “But I’ve never landed on a windshield. It’s designed to spider out, the glass, so when you land on it — I was wearing a leather jacket, thankfully I didn’t get all cut up — the fall wasn’t great but not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Yeah, some debris came up and landed straight in my eye, so I’m dealing with that right now.”
When asked how much of this was planned, McIntyre said he didn’t want to say too much, but had no problem making Priest the scapegoat.
“I’m not supposed to be sitting here with an eye patch,” McIntyre said. “Yet I am because of… let’s throw him under the bus, because of the clumsiness of my opponent. That’s why it happened.”
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