Eli Drake Discusses Winning The World Championship, “Impact’s” Ratings Decline

GFW Global Champion Eli Drake was recently interviewed by Sports Illustrated and discussed a number of topics. Among them were his reaction to winning the Global Championship, the decline of “Impact’s” ratings and more.

Below are some highlights from the interview:

On finding out he was going to win the world championship:

“Once I heard the decision was made [to win the world title], I put a lot of extra pressure on myself to not relax or be complacent,” said Drake. “I actually started doubling up my workouts and I was in the ring two or three times a week extra just because I wanted my work in the ring, on the mic, and my conditioning to be second to none. If I’m going to be the face of the company, then I’m going to make sure I can go like nobody else.”

Closing Moments of Gauntlet For The Gold | Who is Champion? | #IMPACTICYMI August 24th, 2017

On “Impact’s” declining ratings and if the return of the NFL is contributing:

“I don’t like to use that as an excuse,” offered Drake. “If we’re putting out a compelling product, then we should still have the eyeballs on our product. If you rewind about 20 years, and look at WWE in 1997, they were putting on a great product but nobody knew because WCW made such a loud noise via the NWO. It took WWE another year-and-a-half to make that big comeback, even though they were producing some great stuff with [Steve] Austin and DX.

“We just had the regime change months ago. There is the stuff we didn’t expect with Jeff [Jarrett] and Anthem, but growing pains are to be expected. I hold a lot of that burden on myself. I am the guy at the forefront of the company, and I want to make sure eyes are on us.”

They also discuss who he’d like to feud with in the future, why fans should invest in him and more.

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