PWInsider - WWE News, Wrestling News, WWE

DREW MCINTYRE AND BIANCA BELAIR DISCUSS PERFORMING IN FRONT OF LIVE FANS AGAIN AND MORE

Yesterday PeacockTV presented a special virtual media event to promote Wrestlemania 37 with Bianca Belair and Drew McIntyre.  The first-ever Peacock & WWE “Meat Up” featured a virtual class where members of the media were invited to take part in constructing a charcuterie board.  The last ten minutes of the event featured a Q&A with the WWE talents, which you can read below.  You can order Peacock to watch WWE Programming and specials at www.PeacockTV.com.

Moderator: We've got a lot of questions in the chat. So Drew, we have one for you. Why didn't you use your sword to cut the cheese?

Drew McIntyre: Ah, yes. My sword. I didn't want to show Bianca up. I've already got knife personally delivered to me by "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. No, he's a pretty big deal, but I didn't want to overdo it and bring my big clean sword to cut cheese.

Bianca: Belair: Tou are bringing out Slammies and gifts from Stone Cold. How am I supposed to compete with this?

Drew: What? You're way younger than me. You'd have plenty of time to do all that.   At my age, I always say experience.

Moderator: Okay. Our next question is to both of you, what will it be like competing in front of a live crowd for the first time in over a year?

Bianca Belair: Well, for me, especially it's, I feel like it's going to be a huge family reunion. We're having 25,000 people each night, keeping everyone safe following set protocols. But for me, my family is such a huge part of what I do. And they come to every, all my big events, of my big smacks. They haven't been able to be there for over a year. So it's going to be like so fun seeing everyone's faces, but it's going to be just an amazing feeling to have my family there. And you know that they're going to be a part of the callback show. I can't wait. It's just going to be a magical two nights.

Drew McIntyre: It doesn't even seem real. Like after the past year, I'm so proud of everything we've been able to do and keeping everyone entertained during these difficult times, we miss our fans so much. They're our number one superstar, secret sauce. The atmosphere is like nothing in the world, maybe European soccer is the closest things. Our fans are so passionate loud to let you know how they feel. If you go out, you might get booed. If you're the bad guy you might cheered, do you never know how they're going to react. All I know is the atmosphere is going to be insane.

Bianca Belair:  We always say what we do and WWE is the purpose is to put smiles on Ben's faces. I don't think it's said enough that the fans put smiles on our faces, so.

Drew McIntyre: 100%

Moderator:  So I have another one for both of you guys. So what match on the card, are you guys most excited about that isn't yours?

Drew McIntyre: Bianca vs. Sasha.

Bianca: I won one!   I will say, I'm really excited for Rhea Ripley and Asuka just because I came up with, I was in the Rumble with Rhea and I feel like we kind of came up to Raw and Smackdown together. So I'm excited to see who's going to come out on top of that batch.

Drew McIntyre: Yeah. There's a whole bunch of like top to bottom, both nights, this unbelievable card each night.

Bianca Belair  Yeah.

Drew McIntyre : I'm excited to see Riddle and Sheamus beat the heck out of each other.  Bad Bunny, he's really going to shock a lot of people I think. We've been, I've been watching every single week, like a hawk. The guy doesn't have to be there every single week. You can be off just living it up. He's a Grammy award winning artist. He could do his own. He's coming in to try to bring eyeballs. He genuinely loves the products putting in the hours in the ring as well, and he's going to show he came to play.  It'll be great.

Moderator: We have another one for both of you guys. So do you, do either of you have one lesson learned from performing without fans in attendance that you'll take into WrestleMania when fans are back.

Bianca Belair: Thank you. That's a good question.

Drew McIntyre: It's interesting because we've had to kind of do things a little different, when it comes to our matches. We've got the Thunderdome, now we can get that, in a real time reaction, hang up, dictate where we go with the match. With the live crowd you never know how they're going to react in person. And once you're at the level you're at WWE should be able to adapt on the fly. I'd be able to go with what the crowd are feeling, we don't know how I'm going to be feeling. You have to be ready for that.  When it comes to the interviews, it's been a unique time in the sense that we don't have the fans kind of shouting over it, more talking and taking the interviews different directions. And we've been able to add more depth to our characters and educate the fans who we are on a deeper level, especially during the Performance Center, you're catching all the cheese. So once again, I'm excited to see them react and we'll just go with the flow that we always do in WWE we innovate in the path.

Bianca Belair: I think it's just, our always knew the importance of performing, but especially without a crowd with extra light on connecting with people through a television screen. So for me, like I, I debuted on Raw and Smackdown and I won the Royal Rumble with no real crowd. So it's really just depending on your talent and who you need gone like depth, your character, who you are and trying to get people to do something. I learned a lot about that and I feel like it's made me a better performer.

Moderator:  We have a question about your cats since they made an appearance? We have, what is your cat's name and will it be in your corner at WrestleMania?

Drew: My Cat's name is Chaz. I also have one called Hunter and they were actually on the virtual screens in the Thunderdome when I won back and WWE championship against Randy Orton. And so I kind of won the title in a couple of different eras and the Performance Center with no fans, I beat Brock Lesnar WrestleMania last year, the Thunderdome against Randy. And I had Chaz and my wife on the Thunderdome there. I would love if he could come in person, but it will be certainly watching from home. My wife will be there live, and hopefully I'll be able to pull off the big victory in front of the crowd this time for the third time.

Moderator So let's see, we've got, and I think this is a good one to wrap up with since we are kind of running on time before I pass it back to the other team. So we have. Which superstar would be which cheese? So I'm assuming within the wrestlers who is like, what cheese? What have you guys learned, which cheese do you see yourself?

Drew: What is the smelly one again we tried first?

Moderator: That's called Morbier.

Drew: Yeah, that's Sheamus. It's smelly like him.

Bianca: I would have to say any cheese. I can pick any cheese.  I guess, I don't know. I don't have anything witty to say. I would say Carmella says she's money. So I would say Carmella is the cheddar because I don't. No one's got that. Cheddar is money. Money's cheddar Carmella. Okay.

Drew: There you go.

Bianca: Okay. You got it. Okay. I guess.

Drew: She emphasizes enough, and my Sheamus smells. 

Moderator: Okay. So that is it for our meet board making class and our question session, I'm going to kind of wrap my time up and pass it back over to you guys or to the Peacock team to kind of wrap up and thank you guys so much for making some boards with me. Hopefully you'll eat them, now that class is over. Don't let them sit there, you should definitely eat them while they're fresh. And I thanks so much guys.

Bianca: Thank you. This is really fun. Thank you.

Drew: This has been great. Thank you for today. Showing us all how to make a nice fancy cheeseboard? I'm certainly enjoying it, tonight. Make sure everyone checks out WrestleMania this Saturday, Sunday, April 10th and 11th, exclusively on Peacock. It's going to be incredible shows. We talked about from top to bottom, from a match perspective, seeing our fans back in the building, seeing them react, it's going to give you a glimpse of what it's going to be like going forward to get back to normal. It's going to feel really good to see the people back in the building. Getting crazy. Also the nightmares I have from this cheese, would be nothing compared to the nature of bringing Lashley on Saturday, but I win back the title. Thank you all.

If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more by clicking here!

• Tweet