Eli Drake On AEW's Early Success, Locker Room Morale In Impact Wrestling
Eli Drake is now a free agent after a successful four-year stint with Impact Wrestling. This just happens to come at a time when AEW is just sprouting up which provides another option for someone like Drake who is on the market.
Drake spoke to Wrestling Inc. on our WINCLY podcast about the offers he's received since becoming a free agent.
"I just can't go ahead and give you everything right now," said Drake. "I've had plenty of emails and booking requests come in. There are some cool things in the works, but nothing's been inked yet and nothing's set in stone. So you never know where I'll pop up."
Drake has worked for Impact, NWA and WWE in addition to the indie circuit. He is very familiar with multiple wrestling promotions and was asked to weigh in on what AEW is doing.
"I was in town when [Double or Nothing] happened. I wasn't at the show, but I made the afterparty and stopped by Starrcast to see a couple of people," revealed Drake. "I haven't watched their show in its entirety; I've seen little bits. Hopefully they keep the buzz and continue rolling on. Of course, having a big TNT deal is next level because that's what places like Impact and ROH have been trying to do for two decades.
"As far as if I'll be there or anywhere else, who knows?"
Drake was one of the few Impact holdovers from the Dixie Carter regime and he talked about the differences between then and now.
"I really don't feel like it was that much different," Drake said before adding the only thing that's changed are the rumors regarding the promotion's imminent demise. "As far as backstage, the morale has always been good. It's very relaxed backstage. No one's walking on eggshells and there's no one stabbing another in the back. It's always been really good."
As for those rumors that Impact was always about to go out of business, Drake reasoned why those were so common.
"I feel like that's just the new Twitter troll environment that we've created. They wish bad upon other people because misery loves company. Those aren't real wrestling fans because if they were, you wouldn't want to see a company go away," said Drake.
"I will say, since Anthem came in the actual structure of everything seemed a little more sturdy. Even when we heard those [rumors] again, we thought, 'Okay, we're good.'"
As a free agent, Drake now has a little more free time than he's used to. He talked about what he does outside of wrestling.
"I was one of the top paid guys at Impact, thankfully. With that money, I invested a bunch of it and I've been taking classes on learning day trading with stocks," stated Drake. "I was thinking about getting into real estate, but that's a little bit too much of an investment right now. But I've been day trading stocks and I've been doing it pretty successfully."
You can follow Eli Drake on Twitter @TheEliDrake.
Drake's full interview with Wrestling Inc was included in a recent episode of our WINCLY podcast. It can be heard via the embedded audio player at the bottom of this post. In it Drake discusses why he decided to leave Impact Wrestling, turning down a match with Tessa Blanchard, a possible leap to AEW, differences in the Impact regimes, a pre-Jericho interview conversation he had with Jon Moxley and more
You can check out past episodes of the WINCLY here.
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