Drew McIntyre Backstage Incident at WWE Royal Rumble 2025 Event Update – WWE’s Original Plans for McIntyre’s Elimination Spot & Issues with LA Knight

As noted before, Drew McIntyre was involved in a backstage incident following his elimination from the Men’s Royal Rumble match at Saturday’s WWE Royal Rumble event. McIntyre stormed out of the venue over being furious over his issues with another performer, later revealed to be LA Knight, who was claimed to only care at trying to put himself over and not the match nor stories being told in it.

PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported that his sources provided additional details regarding the cause of McIntyre’s frustrations and the original plans for McIntyre’s elimination in the match.

Johnson reported that McIntyre was originally meant to be eliminated from the Men’s Rumble match earlier than he was. McIntyre’s spot where he tried to eliminate Jey Uso only for himself to get eliminated by Damian Priest was planned to happen sooner than had actually happened. The idea reportedly was for McIntyre’s elimination to be a major spot to kick off a program between him and Priest for WrestleMania 41.

This elimination spot reportedly was delayed by several sequences involving LA Knight including one involving him fighting with Roman Reigns. This spot reportedly was further delayed by the entrance of Logan Paul who immediately began working with Knight as planned. Johnson reported that adding to McIntyre’s frustrations was Knight accidentally bumping into him, Uso, and Priest as they were going through his elimination sequence and causing it to come off worse than envisioned.

Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp reported in a recent episode of Fightful’s In The Weeds podcast that his sources stated that McIntyre was originally planned to be eliminated from the match prior to Paul coming out at #30. Sapp reported that those spoken to stated that this spot ended up being delayed due to McIntyre and others believing Knight was taking too long to get his stuff done in time to do the elimination spot.

Sapp also reported that those spoken to confirmed that Knight was the person that McIntyre and others were frustrated with over their issues with him in the match.