^{Research Note: Sources & Citations are linked in the bolded text below.}

Content Warning: ICW is an 18+ wrestling promotion with adult content.

Ayr’s Drew McIntyre is one of the top professional wrestlers in the world today. This journey began with a fifteen-year-old Drew Galloway making the twelve-hour trip from Scotland to Portsmouth for training; he would teach his mates up north what he’d learned, and together they’d build the beginnings of a Scottish wrestling scene. Galloway progressed from Heavyweight Champion of British Championship Wrestling and Irish Whip Wrestling through to slaying ”The Beast Incarnate” Brock Lesnar for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 36 and main eventing Clash at the Castle against “The Head of the Table” Roman Reigns.

Between 2006 and 2007, Galloway’s “Chosen Destiny” included four stops in Glasgow’s fledgling Insane Championship Wrestling promotion. The shows were not name-making for the young Scot or for the promotion itself, but these moments would years later prove to have been pivotal when the paths of ICW and Galloway crossed again in 2014, with one looking to offer a bloody, bawdy alternative to the safe and predictable and the other looking to prove himself as The Man.

November 2nd 2022 marks eight years since Drew Galloway recaptured the ICW Heavyweight Championship at Fear & Loathing VII to begin a year-plus reign that would span the globe, see ICW run some of the biggest independent UK shows in history and allow him to transform into what ICW commentator Billy “Fucking” Kirkwood would call “The New Phenom” on his road to becoming the first Scottish World Heavyweight Champion in the history of World Wrestling Entertainment.

The Reign:

Championship Victory: Drew Galloway defeats Jack Jester at Fear & Loathing VII in Glasgow, Scotland on November 2nd 2014.

Championship Loss: Grado defeats Galloway at Fear & Loathing VIII in Glasgow, Scotland on November 15th 2015.

Length of Reign: 378 days.

Twenty-Five Recorded Title Retentions: Kid Fite (ICW: Brush Your Goose) / Chaos & Michael Fynne (Dansk Pro Wrestling) / Lewis Girvan (ICW: Spacebaws Episode V) / Chris Renfrew (ICW: Fourth Annual Square Go!) / Matt Hardy (Family Wrestling Entertainment) / Andy Phoenix (Outback Championship Wrestling) / Joe Coffey (ICW: BarraMania) / Doug Williams (Revolution Pro Wrestling) / Joe Hendry & Luther Valentine & Tron (Pro Wrestling Ulster) / Grado (ICW: The Princess is in Another Castle) / Jack Jester & Grado (ICW: Paperboy) / Sabu & Jack Jester (ICW: Alex Kidd in London) / Tommy End (ICW: Up Down Left Right A C Start) / Mikey Whiplash (ICW: Flawless Victory) / Joey Ace & Logan Black & Matt Macintosh (Warriors of Wrestling) / Rhino (ICW: Long Before Wesley Snipes) / Big Damo (ICW: Shug’s Hoose Party II) / Joey D (Phoenix Events) / Kris Travis (ICW: A Horse, A Spoon And A Bucket) / Rampage Brown (ICW: One Fall Brawl) / Doug Williams (ICW: Bazooko Circus) / Chaos & Apu Singh (Maximum Wrestling) / Matt Daly (ICW: Appetite for Destruction Pre-Show) / Stephen Hughes (ICW: Appetite for Destruction Pre-Show) / Coach Trip (ICW: Appetite for Destruction Pre-Show).

“Thee” Champion:

Drew Galloway’s first reign as the ICW Heavyweight Champion began on October 10th 2006 at ICW’s debut event, Fear & Loathing. Main eventing at Maryhill’s Community Central Halls, Galloway defeated “The Natural” Allan Grogan and Darkside in front of 73 fans to become the inaugural champion. Many on that night’s card would become mainstays of ICW and some would even make it to WWE, but the big name on the show that night was “The Wild-Eyed Southern Boy” Tracy Smothers.

This was long before ICW had a consistent schedule (much less national touring or weekly broadcasts), but the champion would make successful defences over Grogan at December’s Serious Assault and Wolfgang at February 2007’s Stop! He’s Already Dead! events. Reflecting on his early career, Galloway would simply call these shows “a shambles,” but watching them back, it’s obvious Galloway stood out to the modest crowds this version of ICW had been able to attract. These early ICW shows wouldn’t set the world (or even Maryhill) on fire, but connections were being formed between ICW and the talent that would become synonymous with the promotion in the coming years.

ICW went on something of a hiatus for the next five months, not returning until ReZerection in July, and by then Galloway was newly signed with WWE and just weeks away from reporting to their developmental system in Ohio Valley Wrestling. The champion was originally scheduled to defend his ICW title against IWW rival Sheamus O’Shaunessy, who had also been hired at the same UK tryout. A match between two of WWE’s new prospects was understandably off the table, but Galloway nonetheless insisted on making one last trip to drop the title to Darkside in a Five-Way match that also included Wolfgang, Liam Thomson and Jack Jester. 

In a story already well told, young McIntyre left his home country to make history as the first wrestler to be signed from Scotland to the WWE. As Vince McMahon’s handpicked “future World Champion,” he would compete on several WrestleMania cards, perform in signature matches like Money in the Bank, Survivor Series and the Royal Rumble, and even challenge for the iconic “Big Gold Belt” in the fearsome Elimination Chamber. Yet slowly but surely, the “Chosen One”drifted out of view before joining with Heath Slater and Jinder Mahal as 3MB. His time in leather trousers was extremely fun to watch, but McIntyre was not looking like a future World Champion at this moment. The inevitable release from his dream job followed on June 12th 2014, and just six weeks later Drew Galloway appeared before 1,200 deafening fans in a spellbinding moment at ICW’s Shug’s Hoose Party in Glasgow.

Galloway’s presence in the country was a rarely kept secret in the chisme-loving world of professional wrestling. The audience’s attention was firmly on Chris Renfrew and his New Age Kliq who were pummelling Jester, the battle-worn ICW Heavyweight Champion. Looking to finally cash in the guaranteed title match he had earned in the 2014 Square Go! rumble, Renfrew told Jester: “You’ve got no friends left.”

The transition from the Jester era to the Renfrew era seemed inevitable, and one ICW icon pulling ahead of the other would be an unforgettable moment in the company’s history. Instead, the room went dark. As the lights of O2 ABC flickered off and on, a fuming Galloway appeared to send the NAK packing. This electrifying return left Galloway’s mission statement ringing in the ears of his countrymen–and his friend Jester crumpled in a broken heap. 

_{“I’m the former British Champion, former Irish Champion, former WWE Tag Team Champion, former WWE Intercontinental Champion, and I was the first Insane Championship Wrestling Champion…and Hell, I’m from Scotland!” – Drew Galloway (Shug’s Hoose Party, June 2014)}

In addition to winning the 2014 ICW Awards for “Moment of the Year” and “Promo of the Year,” this landmark event proved to be a turning point in Galloway’s life and career. Becoming one of ICW’s most widely viewed moments, it made its way to Mick Foley, Triple H, Chris Jericho, Jim Ross and Stone Cold Steve Austin. This wasn’t the same wrestler that WWE had given up on; McIntyre had been shown the door, but now people were wanting to see where a reborn Galloway might be going.

_{“The first thing I did was text Triple H and I don’t text him very often…I said ‘you need to keep your eye on this guy. He’s almost like a different human being.’ I guess he did keep his eye on him as he came back and just the progress he made was incredible.” – Mick Foley (May 2021)}

Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride:

Much had to happen between 2007 and 2014 in both Scottish wrestling and Mark Dallas’ Insane promotion for Galloway to be able to deliver this warning shot before an enraptured sold-out audience. That rise didn’t happen overnight. ICW’s ReZerection event proved to be anything but a resurrection when it took almost two years for ICW to return with Fear & Loathing 2 in May 2009. Another false start: ICW again went on hiatus until February 2010– but now things finally began to change.

In 2010 and 2011, ICW managed to run five events before building to ten in 2012 and a regular monthly show in 2013. The boosted schedule also showed increases in attendance, and they began moving their events into 18+ nightclubs across Glasgow with The Garage eventually becoming their primary residence. As their reputation grew, so did their footprint, with forays outside of Glasgow becoming increasingly common.

During these years, the talent that helped define ICW began establishing themselves. The likes of The Coffey Brothers (Joe Coffey & Mark Coffey), Noam Dar (so young he had to be snuck into the venues), The Bucky Boys (Stevie Xavier/Boy & Davey Blaze), Mikey Whiplash, Andy Wild (see also: “Make Your Own Moments: Four Years of UEWA European Heavyweight Champion Andy Roberts”), Damian O’Connor, Joe Hendry, BT Gunn and viral video star The Wee Man would debut, win championships and sow seeds for lifetime feuds and friendships. ICW’s burgeoning women’s and intergender divisions emerged too, including wrestlers like Kay Lee Ray, Nikki Storm, The Owens Twins (Kasey Owens & Leah Owens) and Carmel Jacob.

Outside of its homegrown talent, ICW began to attract established veterans from beyond Scotland. Imposing Englishman Johnny Moss was the first, a man who’d beaten UFC legend Dan “The Beast” Severn to keep a stranglehold on the NWA United Kingdom Championship for over 1,100 days. Then came Germany’s Bad Bones, fresh off a tour with Big Japan Pro-Wrestling. World-renowned technical wrestler Zack Sabre Jr. made ICW one of his first UK stops after his first year with Pro Wrestling NOAH. In late 2012, Mark Andrews, the first Welshman to hold a WWE title, made three trips to Glasgow between 2011 and 2013. Ireland’s Fergal Devitt, a multiple-time champion across the world for New Japan Pro Wrestling and Consejo Mundial De Lucha Libre, began competing in ICW as well. More would soon come, and this steady influx of national and international talent proved that ICW was now more than just one of very few places where local lads could get some ring time before heading south.

A spotlight began to shine on ICW in a period which aided their national expansion and international reputation. Their brief foray into television on MyChannel had ended disastrously when their adult content was played in the wrong time slot, but this was made up for by VICE’s The British Wrestler documentary which followed internet sensation and force of nature Grado on his underdog challenge for “Rudo” Red Lightning’s ICW Heavyweight Championship. The BBC’s Insane Fight Club came in 2014, documenting the build to Jester’s title win at a previously unthinkable sold-out O2 ABC venue in Glasgow. No doubt aided by the undeniable charm and banter of the man “fae the tap end o’ Stevenston,” ICW were able to use this attention from mainstream outlets to appeal to a growing cult audience who were drawn in by the blood, sexuality and athleticism that the Glasgow gang offered.

All of this meant that come the middle of 2014, Galloway would be able to re-debut as a returning hero for a promotion that was unrecognisable from the one he had left, one which had gone from promoting five cards in four years to running twenty-four shows in 2014. This version of ICW boasted high-quality production, a residency at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, a growing number of touring markets, a date at the Barrowland Ballroom and a prestigious championship for him to reclaim.

Welcome To the Asylum:

Having spent the last few years as the punchline of short comedy matches, “The Fucking Business” Drew Galloway had already begun to prove himself in the ring again by winning the EVOLVE Wrestling Championship from Chris Hero (see September’s “Self-Chosen: The EVOLVE Championship Reign of Drew Galloway” feature). Clearly Galloway had won over the ICW faithful with July’s impassioned promo, but meeting the Land of Insanity’s standards of physicality and aggression was never guaranteed.

Galloway’s first match back took place on August 31st at 1.21 Gigawatts, Great Scott! in ICW’s home city of Glasgow. Picking up where he’d left off, he faced Darkside, the man who’d taken the ICW Heavyweight Championship from him seven years prior. This time, Galloway left as both the victor and the Number One Contender for Jester’s title. The biggest ICW show to date loomed on November 2nd at the legendary Barrowlands. Galloway Vs. Jester was announced to headline the Fear & Loathing VII supercard, and with just this one contest confirmed, ICW sold-out the 1,600 tickets. It was a Big Fight Feel.

Jester had talked a very good game in the lead up to the marquee match. He asserted that where ICW was today had nothing to do with the ex-WWE star. The champion expressed he had a heart bigger than the challenger’s ego and that his weapon of choice (a bloody corkscrew!) was shinier than Galloway’s teeth. If Jester talked hard ahead of the contest he fought harder on the night, even jumping his former friend before the bell.

“The Hardcore Icon” had spent 385 days on top by turning back sixteen previous challenges that had included Sabu, Jimmy Havoc, Martin Stone and Devitt–but this night was different, and Galloway was undeniable. 

_{“It was possibly and likely the biggest moment of my career. The build with such a close friend, the reality of it all and having such a hands on approach to the story was fantastic. It meant so much to both of us professionally and personally.” – Drew Galloway (Snapmare Necks, January 2015)}

Both men had dedicated this match to the late Angela Anne Galloway, and her wee boy was visibly overcome when he raised his newly won ICW Heavyweight Championship to the cheers of this record audience. The following day would mark two years since the loss of his mother, and though she surely could have been no prouder of her son than she already was, the new champion clearly found meaning in this momentous accomplishment on the eve of a painful day.

_{“I woke up one morning and looked at myself hard in the mirror, and asked myself, ‘What would mum do?’ At many points in my career, when I was exhausted and rundown, I’d think, ‘What would Mum do or say to support me?’ And the answer was always: ‘pick yourself up, push on, never quit and do it all with a smile on your face.’ She soldiered on through life’s cruel health blows with a courage that remains a touchstone of inspiration for me. She did everything in her power to help me follow my dream to WWE: she always knew I could do it.” – Drew McIntyre (‘A Chosen Destiny: My Story’, April 2021)}

The weeks leading to Galloway becoming a two-time ICW Heavyweight Champion were documented in the BBC’s lnsane Fight Club II, which was more tremendous national exposure for the outsider promotion.

Now a double champion between EVOLVE and ICW, Galloway had become The Man in premiere independents on two continents. This was a significant accomplishment for a performer who’d been playing air guitar on TV not so long ago, but his mission remained the same. However many titles he held, he needed to hold more. However big the championship might be, he was determined to make it bigger.

_{“Fear and Loathing XII was the night it all changed. When Drew Galloway and Jack Jester went head to head that night it was billed as the biggest match in Scottish history and everyone in the building that night believed that to be the case. It held weight. Former best pals seeing their friendship come to a bitter, probably bloody end because of a wrestling championship. It was massive, and when Drew won to become a two-time ICW Champion a seismic shift occurred. ICW was no longer going to be a big deal just locally. ICW was ready to make the kind of noise that has yer neighbours from two streets away phoning the polis. ICW was ready to have a globetrotting workhorse representing them not just when he wrestled here, but when he wrestled everywhere. Despite all the success and brilliant things happening to ICW, there was another gear they could get to and Drew Galloway helped them slide into it seamlessly. Everyone seemed to almost get better overnight.” – Snapmare Necks (February 2018)}

The First Travelling World Champion Since Ric Flair:

_{“The titles, I don’t want them to define me, I’m defining the title…Fans will say ‘Look – there’s Drew Galloway! I’m learning about ICW, I’m learning more about EVOLVE and Dragon Gate, I’m learning Australian wrestling, Danish wrestling, Scottish wrestling – things I didn’t know about!’ That’s my goal – to put eyes on the world of wrestling. To have the entire world watching it. It’s as simple as that – to be the first travelling World Champion since Ric Flair.” – Drew Galloway (Wrestling Observer, April 2015)}

The new ICW Heavyweight Champion made his first defences of the title in December 2015. Kid Fite had defeated big Johnny Moss at Fear & Lothian II to earn a title shot in the main event of Brush Your Goose, but Galloway snatched victory from the jaws of defeat to prove his second reign was no fluke against this decorated veteran.

As EVOLVE Champion, Galloway had been willing to go well beyond what was expected of him in order to raise the title’s prestige by putting the gold on the line at myriad independent shows in the UK and USA. He was more than willing to do the same for ICW. 

Despite having barely squeaked past his first challenger, Galloway packed his belt on a flight to Denmark for Dansk Pro Wrestling. Entering a Triple Threat main event with Michael Fynne and Chaos, Galloway put his ICW title up against Fynne’s DPW Heavyweight Championship. Though Fynne had managed to survive a multitude of challengers in his 321 day reign with Denmark’s oldest title, it was the former Chosen One who left Scandinavia with a third championship belt.

Back home, ICW newcomer Lewis Girvan (who physically resembled a shrunken Galloway) had been taunting the new champion with 3MB parody vignettes. This ICW prospect was feeling pretty confident that his challenge at Spacebaws Episode V: Bill Murray Strikes Back would go unanswered due to the champion’s international commitments. Young Girvan got both the opportunity and fright of his life when an unadvertised and travel-weary champion came through the curtain to put the title on the line and batter his petite doppelgänger with a festive tree.

Four days before Christmas and having demonstrated that his ICW return was no one-shot deal with three successful title retentions already in the books, Galloway announced his ambition to take the ICW Heavyweight Championship further than it had ever gone before until it could be credibly known as a World Championship. With the champion motivated to distinguish his title on the world stage, 2015 promised to be the title’s defining year, but to close out 2014, he and General Manager Lightning were simply going to sing The Big Show’s entrance music while a faux 3MB partied in the ring. I-C-Dub.

In February 2015, frequent flyer Galloway returned to Family Wrestling Entertainment for a stacked No Limits pay-per-view card at the Resorts World New York City Casino. Galloway was announced to face his former WWE rival Matt Hardy in a non-title contest, but fan response in the weeks leading to the event pushed ICW and FWE to sanction the first official ICW World Heavyweight Championship match. An old pro, Hardy was quick to comment: “Can’t wait to win the ICW Title & then defend it in Scotland. Might just buy a summer UK home.” 

A successful belt collector in his own right at this time, Hardy nearly did find cause to summer in Scotland when he pinned Galloway and was announced as the new champion, but when the referee determined the foot of the defending champion to be in the ropes, the bout was restarted. With everything again to play for, Galloway did some ungentlemanly things to achieve his goal of leaving Queens with his promise kept.

The following month, the champion travelled even further, taking his titles to Victoria, Australia for Outback Championship Wrestling. Headlining OCW’s Supershow card before a capacity crowd of 750 fans, the New Phenom put the EVOLVE and ICW Championships on the line in a Title for Title match with Andy Phoenix, the reigning OCW Heavyweight Champion. 

Though ICW had been kicked off television in their home country, Melbourne residents could tune in to Channel 31 to see Galloway retain ICW’s top prize whilst ending Phoenix’s 391-day reign to earn himself a fourth championship title.

Having defended ICW’s World Heavyweight Championship in five countries across three continents, Galloway had done what he had promised to do as “the busiest wrestler in the world.” With an increasing schedule of dates for EVOLVE and ICW and now commitments to Total Nonstop Action Wrestling as well, the champion worked hard to continue establishing the title away from home.

In April, Galloway put his ICW, EVOLVE and newly won Dragon Gate USA Open the Freedom Gate Championship on the line against the legendary Doug Williams for top English promotion Revolution Pro Wrestling. This stiff No Disqualification match was the first time the ICW title had been defended in the UK outside of an ICW ring. At one point, Williams looked to have it won, but luck just wasn’t with him in Broxbourne. A post-match Galloway greeted photo-op-goers by dancing to Guns N Roses and was overheard, by this writer, asking the rhetorical question: “How great is Doug Williams?”

The following day, a surely exhausted World Champion arrived in Northern Ireland for Pro Wrestling Ulster’s Super Show 6. Again with the EVOLVE and DGUSA titles also on the line, the champion survived a Fatal Four-Way with ICW’s “Local Hero” Joe Hendry, Luther Valentine and the seven-foot “Northern Irish Nightmare” TRON.

Sandwiched between an EVOLVE weekend loop and a set of TNA tapings in July, Galloway again put his title on the line in NYC at Warriors of Wrestling’s Ultimate Survival. In a uniquely stipulated Two-Fall Double Title Four-Way, Galloway faced WOW No Limits Champion “The 5 Star Stud” Joey Ace and tristate talents Matt Mackintosh and Logan Black. The rules of the bout were that Ace’s title would be on the line for the first fall, and the Scotsman’s would be in play come the second fall. In something of a stalemate, both champions retained and shared in a tremendous showing of mutual respect after the contest. Galloway wouldn’t leave Staten Island with more gold, but he’d succeeded in surviving the territory’s champion whilst having this wee belt from Maryhill recognised by yet another promotion a world away.

Filling every possible date whilst in the UK for ICW’s Fringe Fest residency, Galloway signed for yet another extracurricular main event title defence in Sheffield for Phoenix Events’ Let’s Start A Riot. Galloway’s challenger was determined in a battle royal at the beginning of the evening with Joey D earning his spot.

The match was a really nice surprise. Joey D was in his rookie year and showed more ambition than self-preservation in this bitter brawl. There were moments where the impossible upset felt possible before Galloway’s strength and experience eventually proved too much for his gutsy opponent. 

Though one of the lesser known gems of his reign, it spoke to the name value of both Galloway and ICW that promoters were willing to host multi-man Number One Contender matches for another company’s title. The contest itself exemplified Galloway’s qualities as a travelling champion: He worked with a local hero who had very few matches under his belt and was able to cover for the moments where inexperience came into play. They told a good David & Goliath underdog story with the announce team even begging the determined challenger to stay down. No one should have entered the Queens Social Club that night expecting a title change, but all the same they were given a reason to believe. Those in attendance chanted for both men and for ICW itself, and despite Galloway’s decisive win, his fallen challenger was elevated even in defeat. The card featured far more established talent who would all have been worthy challengers, but I don’t know that there was a better choice than young Joey D to give Galloway absolute hell on this particular night.

The last of Galloway’s international and independent defences came on October 16th in Kiel, Germany for Maximum Wrestling, where he was scheduled to close the show with Apu Singh and Chaos, who was in his 1,280th day as the European Heavyweight Champion of the Union of European Wrestling Alliance. To the surprise of the 350-person capacity crowd, Galloway again offered his title against that of the continent’s champion. For the third and final time in his ICW World Heavyweight Championship reign, Galloway would leave the ring with more titles than he’d entered with as the new Heavyweight Champion of Europe.

As a travelling champion, Galloway made eight independent defences of the ICW World Heavyweight Championship in six countries for eight different promotions. This was a title that had previously gone no further than London, and though Jester was ICW’s most fightingest champion at that time with an impressive sixteen successful retentions across his 385-day reign, Galloway had managed 50% of that purely off his own back outside of his ICW bookings.

None of this is to criticise past or subsequent champions whose reigns typically saw challenges in the single digits (Thee Drew Galloway included); the growth of ICW and the name value of today’s Galloway simply changed what was possible for the belt, but it is nonetheless a credit to the title holder’s work ethic and his impact as the champion. It’s all the more impressive that he achieved these feats whilst doing the same for the EVOLVE Championship, which he defended fourteen times on independent shows in the UK, US and Australia.

While making towns, Galloway fended off legends like Hardy and Williams, hungry rookies and long standing international champions to raise the prestige and visibility of his title. He put the World Heavyweight Championship on the line in matches that would be preserved on the PPVs, DVDs, VODs, YouTube shows and even the local television broadcasts of multiple companies which had no past connection to ICW or the Scottish wrestling scene. It was a tremendous run that clearly had an influence on and created opportunities for the champions who followed, with independent title defences made in Italy, Ireland, Cardiff and the USA by Big Damo, Wolfgang, DCT and Trent Seven (in a WWE ring, no less, at WrestleMania Axxess). 

The ICW women’s division followed the example set by Galloway, too. The ICW Women’s Championship has been defended in Japan for World Wonder Ring Stardom by Kay Lee Ray and Viper as well as in Finland by Molly Spartan. In 2018 this championship, like Galloway’s before it, was rebranded as the ICW Women’s World Championship.

Update August 12th 2023: The subsequent reign of “El Capitan” Leyton Buzzard, was modeled on Galloway’s with Buzzard returning the ICW title to Germany, Ireland, England and Italy while making first-time defences in Sweden, Spain and Canada. “Distant Shores: The ICW World Heavyweight Championship Reign of ‘El Capitan’ Leyton Buzzard” is a deep-dive article about his record-setting reign.

Champion of Insanity:

Galloway’s success abroad as the ICW Champion had in many ways redefined what the title was and could be, but ICW was only ICW because of its feral fanbase. The cult was growing internationally but home was Glasgow, and it was in Scotland’s most populous city that every previous title change had taken place. 

If Galloway truly wanted to prove himself as the Champion of Insanity, it was Glasgow where he’d be wanting to do it. His path to greatness required putting down a roster of ICW originals and turning back incoming challengers before ICW’s home audience. Initial challenger Kid Fite had been a good start, but he’d been thrust into Heavyweight title contention quite abruptly after multiple failed efforts to claim the ICW Zero-G Championship. Girvan, his second ICW challenger, was still unproven, and Galloway’s surprise appearance to give him a title opportunity had been more of a punishment than reward. As such, Galloway had yet to be truly tested as champion in 2014, but this all changed come the New Year.

Galloway had become the face of a hot company overnight in 2014, but it hadn’t just appeared beneath his feet. At the time of his shock appearance at Shug’s Hoose Party, men like Grado and Joe Coffey were both on the cusp of ICW greatness while Damo, Stevie Boy, Kenny Williams, Noam Dar and Polo Promotions (Jackie Polo & Mark Coffey) had been separating themselves from the rest of the pack. Former champions Gunn and Whiplash were no doubt aching to regain their spot on top of the rising promotion, while “The Franchise of ICW” Wolfgang was surely due his moment too as we entered the final days of the Jester era. Though his arrival came with a plethora of positives, Galloway’s return had Claymore kicked a lot of cans up the road.

One man more than others would feel his day delayed. Chris Renfrew had been with ICW since 2009, accumulating three ICW Tag Team Championship reigns in that time with his Kliq. Perhaps more importantly, he had also earned himself a cult following committed enough to hijack ICW events on behalf of their unhinged leader.

Since January 2014, Renfrew had tightly held the Square Go! briefcase that guaranteed him a championship match at a time of his choosing. The moment Galloway had arrived in ICW, he had taken something from Renfrew. Galloway’s glory at Shug’s Hoose Party was meant to have been Renfrew’s, but Big Drew had emerged from the darkness to seek a hero’s welcome and thwart Renfrew’s cash-in. Renfrew should have been the ICW Heavyweight Champion going into 2015, and while you got the impression this wasn’t the only thing Renfrew felt Galloway’s presence had stolen from him, he had to focus on the task at hand. The expiry date on his title contract was just weeks away, and time was running out.

Renfrew was not a nice man. He’d never hesitated to cheat or steal to get the things he wanted and he wanted the ICW Championship, but the appearance of Galloway triggered something in him. Galloway’s declarations that he would be the man to put a third floor on the house that Renfrew believed he himself had built infuriated him. He respected Galloway, but he didn’t like him and he certainly didn’t need him. 

_{“You’re acting like this man made a choice to be here and take us to the next level? Did he fuck.” – Chris Renfrew (Brush Your Goose, December 2014)}

It wouldn’t be enough for him to just take Galloway’s title (he’d had that opportunity when, briefcase in hand, he’d left the champion lying motionless); Renfrew needed to beat Galloway because he was better than Galloway. So he called his shot and announced he would be utilising his contract at the last possible moment come the Fourth Annual Square Go! event. 

Renfrew was not known as a body guy, but he’d gotten himself into the best shape of his career for his bout with the dominating champion. If Renfrew had to sharpen his body, then Galloway had to sharpen his tongue. Renfrew was a legendary promo, and though he didn’t need awards to prove it, he had them all the same as the winner of ICW’s Award for “Best Talker” in 2014 (an accomplishment he repeated in 2015). 

_{“The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. His attack is psychological, Damien. And powerful.” – Father Merrin (The Exorcist)}

Galloway had been cutting the promos of his life in recent months, but there were no depths Renfrew wouldn’t sink to and few buttons he didn’t know how to push. Regardless of Galloway’s position as ICW’s top babyface and international ambassador, if he couldn’t keep up then Renfrew would happily sacrifice him.

Renfrew berated Galloway for failing in the WWE and returning like ICW was his first choice. He mocked Galloway (whose accent had been muddied by years abroad and McMahon’s mandatory elocution classes) for being disconnected from his homeland: “You are what Americans think Scotsmen look like…I’m a real fucking Scotsman, Galloway.”

Galloway fired back that Renfrew didn’t go to America because he’s “not fucking good enough.” He made their differences known: “I’m not trying to be the best guy in Scotland, I’m trying to be the best fucking professional wrestler in the world!” 

Renfrew had once spoken into an ICW microphone and claimed he’d dreamed of Galloway’s path. He’d imagined a WWE contract and an Intercontinental Championship, too. When it became clear those things weren’t going to happen for him, he instead began to shape ICW in his own miserable image. Those comments served his purpose at the time, but now in opposition of Galloway they did not, and so they were gone. The Renfrew speaking today had never dreamt of serving in McMahon’s empire; he had always wanted to rule something of his own. ICW was his first and only choice, and it was merely Galloway’s safety net while he prayed for a call from Connecticut.

A master manipulator, “The Batman of Bedlam” could twist Galloway’s words to suit any point he wanted to make. If the fans thought that Galloway had been alluding to athletic limitations on Renfrew’s part then they were wrong; if the audience had thought that Galloway was taunting his World Championship aspirations on the basis that without ICW the farthest from Glasgow that Renfrew could get booked was Carlisle, well then they were deeply naive.

In the warped and spiralling mind of Renfrew, a dishonest Galloway was saying that Scotland was beneath him, and so too was the ICW roster that had made the company what it was while Galloway was away squandering opportunities. If Renfrew wasn’t good enough, then neither was Wolfy or Dar or Gunn or Carmel. It didn’t matter that other ICW talent were booked by the other big UK promotions and Renfrew wasn’t because if there was only one place Renfrew could succeed, then there was only one place worth succeeding in. Rightly or wrongly, Renfrew reframed Galloway’s naming of his failures into a compelling question: If success for a Scottish wrestler was defined by accomplishing what only one man had, what was ICW worth in the eyes of its champion?

_{“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist…The greatest trick Chris Renfrew ever pulled was convincing ICW he has any fucking talent.” – Drew Galloway (ICW Award Show, December 11th 2014)}

Time and time again in his independent run, you could see Galloway’s long, fiery promos turn a cold audience to his way of thinking through sheer force of will, and he continued to do that in this feud with Renfrew. Certainly less ambiguous lines like “I’m gonna kick your cunt in” weren’t so easy for Renfrew to “dissect.” But damage was being done. Renfrew’s twenty-four ICW matches in 2014 had been more than anyone else on the roster, but Galloway’s 2014 had been 92 matches worldwide and his 2015 would reach 105 bouts. This difference in schedules gave Renfrew a lot of time to make his case against Galloway while the champion himself was abroad, ears burning, winning and defending titles.

The NAK’s fans were probably the least forgiving in all of professional wrestling, and what Renfrew said about Galloway was now their gospel. Seeds of doubt and resentment had been sown in the wider audience too which began to flower to the detriment of Galloway’s reputation as a workhorse hero.

Interestingly, this was not the last time Renfrew’s work on the microphone would do almost irreparable damage to his opposition’s standing. Over the next two years, ICW would really see how much Renfrew could hurt a babyface character. Dickie Divers went from the heir apparent to the ICW Championship to being all but run out of Glasgow by a feud with Renfrew. The unthinkable happened in 2016 when Grado made similar mistakes to Galloway, allowing Renfrew to turn fans against this universally beloved star.

On the night, though, it was incredible. With a sold-out audience of 1,200 divided fans, Galloway and Renfrew had a classic. Would an outmatched Renfrew have fallen back on the NAK to wrest the title away? We’ll never know as Big Drew violently eliminated that possibility before the bell even rang. It would be one on one. If Galloway was the face of ICW then Renfrew was its black heart, and both men gave everything. The cheers for Galloway were louder than those for Renfrew but not by much, and the NAK’s supporters surrounded the front row to prove their loyalty.

Renfrew came close. So close. But it couldn’t be Renfrew’s night when it was going to be Galloway’s year. Though it hadn’t been enough the first time, a Future Shock DDT onto a steel chair eventually spelled the end. If this wasn’t the best match of Galloway’s reign, it was the most personal.

In a big night for both men, Renfrew had proven himself capable of reaching an elite level, and Galloway had cemented himself as the real deal in ICW by outlasting the man so many were ready to receive as their new champion. Renfrew would later name this match as one of his favourite ICW moments, saying, “I felt it was my arrival as in-ring performer and elevation to a higher platform.” 

While Renfrew found victory in defeat and the audience was appreciative of the spectacle they’d witnessed, responding relatively well to Galloway’s praise of his fallen rival, the disappointment among some was palpable, and it threatened to become something worse.

_{“Drew Galloway went from 3MB joke to hottest free agent around and made the ICW Championship a world title…Galloway is top talent..a huge positive. Everyone he has wrestled has got better since facing him, me included.”  – Chris Renfrew (via r/SquaredCircle Ask Me Anything, December 2015)}

A few days later, both men’s pre-match arguments were given some validity when Galloway jumped the guardrail of a TNA event in Glasgow’s Hydro Arena to rescue Grado and Al Snow from an attack by The Beat Down Clan (Kenny King, Low Ki & Samoa Joe). Galloway proved himself good enough once again for an American TV wrestling contract and he was well received by their audience, but the response from ICW’s possessive fanbase was not so positive.

However ICW fans may have felt about Galloway, it was just days after his first weekend as a TNA wrestler that he made the trip to NYC which allowed the word “World” to be added to ICW’s Heavyweight Championship. A month later, he was off to Australia to do it all over again. There was no one on the roster at that moment who was in a position to do what he was doing. But it came at a cost.

Not everyone wants to know how the sausage gets made, and vocal top talent like Damo, Polo and Joe Coffey began to join the chorus of fans who were angered by seeing the champion of a promotion they held dear spend so much time away. That you can’t be much of a World Champion if you spend every weekend in Glasgow didn’t seem to have occurred to many among the ICW faithful

Having been stretched thin for weeks by TNA tapings, EVOLVE loops and international travel, the champion had been almost entirely absent from the build to his BarraMania title match with Joe Coffey. “The Iron Man” had been tasked with carrying a World Heavyweight Championship feud without a World Heavyweight Champion, and he didn’t hold back. By the time an impossibly jetlagged and visibly exhausted Galloway responded to Coffey’s insults, it was too late.

On March 28th, Galloway defeated Johnny Gargano to retain the EVOLVE title and gain the DGUSA Championship, closing out his packed WrestleMania 31 weekend. It was one of the biggest victories of his career but he had no time to celebrate, needing instead to rush to an airport to fly from San Jose to a sold-out BarraMania the following day. At this “big four” event, Galloway faced off not only with ICW’s Iron Man but a time difference of eight hours and the deafening boos of 1,600 Glaswegians.

Returning to ICW for the first time since achieving the goal of elevating his title to World Championship status, an aspiration fans had cheered, the busiest wrestler on the planet was not received as a returning hero in his homeland. If you ever can back up a claim to be “the personification of professional wrestling,” then Galloway may have done so that night. Despite the frantic rush and an overwhelmingly hostile audience, Galloway and Coffey put on a clinic.

Like Renfrew, Coffey came close. So close. But love him or hate him, this was Galloway’s time. As he had Renfrew, Galloway praised Coffey after the bell, but ICW’s fans didn’t want to be placated: They wanted a new champion. A sign they might get just that came soon after when Damo made his way to the ring and demolished Galloway as the finale of this big event.

Galloway left Glasgow a very unpopular man but he left as the champion. Putting Coffey behind him, he went south to England and defended the ICW title. The next day? The first defence of the ICW title in Northern Ireland. Then he joined the second leg of ICW’s Insane Entertainment Tour for a flurry of notable title matches.

The first of these bouts came against the mighty Grado at The Princess is in Another Castle in Nottingham. The two of them had a lot of fun in the early going with Grado surprising the bigger man on a few occasions, but as the night wore on Galloway grew frustrated. Screaming “Get angry!” he pushed Grado to show some aggression, and the champion very nearly paid for it. Nearly.

Grado survived two devastating Piledrivers, the second of which was delivered onto a steel chair (part-time commentator and full-time ring announcer “Champagne” Simon Cassidy offered this analysis: “Pardon my language, but holy fuck!”). Galloway was poised to deliver a chair to skull killshot on his lovable opponent but found his conscience long enough for Grado to hit a low blow and almost his Wee Boot finisher. Almost. Destiny was not yet finished with these two men, but this night belonged to the defending champion.

You’d have to be a real Pollyanna to think that ICW were going to pull the trigger on a Grado title win in dreary old England, but on the night they clearly had some people fooled. After the bell, Jester returned to reignite his blood feud with Galloway in brutal fashion. Just five minutes up the road that same evening, WWE were offering a house show with in-ring action from Roman Reigns, Cesaro, Daniel Bryan, Bray Wyatt, The New Day (Big E & Kofi Kingston), Neville, Sheamus and Finn Balor, but the fans attending ICW’s Nottingham debut seemed satisfied with the ticket they’d chosen. 

In Birmingham, Galloway was bizarrely announced as the special referee for Jester Vs. Grado at Paperboy

. Perhaps making up for missed dates, possibly wanting revenge on Jester for a recent attack or maybe just thinking this was a daft idea, Galloway stripped off his zebra stripes and added himself to the match to give Grado and Jester a shot at the title. Despite two very different and very credible challengers, the fighting champion remained just that.

At Alex Kidd in London, Galloway entered a dangerous environment when he met Sabu and Jester in a Three Way Dance. Jester successfully infuriated the crowd by stealing Galloway’s pin to eliminate the former ECW World Heavyweight Champion, but one on one, he again fell to his former friend. At one point, Galloway attempted to use a power drill on the skull of Jester, appearing after the fact to be genuinely disturbed by his own bloodlust.

Earlier in the card, Damo had defeated Dave Mastiff to earn the Number One Contendership for Galloway’s title despite General Manager Lightning’s best efforts to keep him out of ICW altogether. Things were simmering.

If you knew you were to face Tommy End on Sunday then you might give yourself Friday and Saturday off from getting kicked in the head, but with a two-day break in ICW’s tour dates, Galloway did what Galloway did: He took bookings and won a championship. Having journeyed north to the Scottish Wrestling Alliance in Paisley, he defeated Doug Williams for the Scottish Heavyweight Championship on the Friday before retaining the title against SWA Tag Team Champion Mark Coffey the next day in Motherwell. 

Carrying six championships in his travel bag, Galloway arrived in Sheffield for ICW’s Up Down Left Right A C Start to defend his title against The Sumerian Death Squad’s deadly striker. The former ICW Tag Team Champion did everything right, but nothing stopped Galloway. End gave the champion his all until all that was left to muster were two defiant middle fingers, which were answered with two Future Shock DDTs. Damo had inserted himself as Kirkwood’s partner on commentary during the match and awaited Galloway on the ramp only for the champion to walk straight past him. Some called it disrespect but Damo claimed fear.

ICW’s tour concluded with Flawless Victory at the Garage in Glasgow. A big-banter hungover Galloway (likely celebrating a successful defence of the EVOLVE, OCW and DGUSA titles in Greenock the previous evening) opened the proceedings by issuing an open challenge. He was answered by a possibly concussed former ICW Heavyweight Champion in “The Necromancer” Mikey Whiplash. Galloway reminded Legion’s leader how the veteran would try to bully him in his early career, but he wouldn’t be intimidated anymore. Overbearing GM Rudo was hesitant to let his groggy champion face Whiplash but had an inexplicable change of heart as he pondered the ethics of letting the challenger compete with a head injury. Galloway’s thirteenth title defence was ultimately sanctioned.

The match got ugly with Galloway stomping on the head of Whiplash and tossing him from the top turnbuckle through a table to the floor in a terrifying moment. Despite another spirited challenge, Galloway dispatched the Necromancer as he had Grado, End, Jester and Sabu. This was not the end of his night however as Damo, feeling ducked and questioning how so many could be getting title shots ahead of the Number One Contender, confronted the defending champion. Galloway continued to look right past his next challenger, but a few slaps from the big man got the champion’s attention, and the two behemoths tore through security to get at one another. Galloway appeared to be getting the better of the exchange, but Damo landing a belter to the baws changed all that.

Despite ending in agony, this had been a very successful tour for the champion, retaining his title against numerous former and future title holders whilst in new markets for his expanding home promotion. Something noticeable, though, was that while Glasgow had been a little kinder to Galloway while he beat up an Englishman, there was still a sense of strain. He had to work twice as hard to get half the cheers. This tension hadn’t been present the farther Galloway got from Glasgow. Fans in London, Sheffield, Nottingham and Birmingham had received him as the babyface World Champion he’d worked so hard to be, but home was not so warm.

ICW’s light post-tour schedule allowed Galloway to compete for Lucha Libre AAA World Wide in Mexico City, defend his EVOLVE and DGUSA titles against Roderick Strong and Biff Busick respectively and challenge for the TNA World Heavyweight and King of the Mountain Championships on TV and PPV. Whatever the hardcore ICW fans thought of him, he was undeniably sought-after worldwide.

The Beast & The Black Label:

July 10th 2015 brought about a seismic shift in the career of Drew Galloway when he lost his EVOLVE and DGUSA Championships to Timothy Thatcher. He had held the EVOLVE title since his first day as an independent wrestler, and it had in many ways helped to define and distinguish him for the last eleven months. This loss triggered a series of events that gradually sent Galloway spiralling into a dark place within Gabe Sapolsky’s promotion. In a familiar story, Galloway had tried to be a leader for EVOLVE, representing them worldwide…and for what?

Ultimately relentless and perhaps now singularly focused, Galloway answered criticisms that he was a part-time ICW champion eight days later by making a second defence in North America before flying back to the city that had seemingly forsaken him. He was scheduled to defend his title against Big Damo on the second night of the Waynestock weekender at Shug’s Hoose Party II–and if you asked Damo, it was long overdue.

Damo believed that if it wasn’t Galloway who feared him, then it was management. In his mind, Lightning and Dallas had been protecting ICW’s investment in Galloway by feeding him opponents they knew he could beat. Whether that meant repeat opportunities for Jester and Grado or enabling an injured Whiplash, Damo felt they understood that he was the only one Galloway was truly vulnerable to. He made the case that ICW was an auld pals club, noting that in the title’s eight-year history it had spent a total of 161 days on a non-Scottish wrestler. He was no longer interested in playing by rules he felt had been designed to exclude him. When a fan told Damo that Galloway had an “army” behind him, Belfast’s Damo expressed his otherness when he simply said: “Where I grew up, we hated the army.”

Before Damo got his shot on the Sunday, Saturday’s Long Before Wesley Snipes would see ICW return to the Maryhill Community Central Halls for the first time since 2013. Galloway wasn’t officially scheduled to defend his title that night, but “The War Machine” Rhino wasn’t scheduled to be there either, and the card is subject to change. Rhino called out the champion, and the champion showed no fear.

Kirkwood sold this surprise clash as the story of the final Extreme Champion facing the current Insane Champion in what could be a passing of the torch. Rhino and Galloway brawled through the streets of Maryhill before Rhino nearly turned the weekend upside down with a brutal Gore. This devastating spear had earned “The Man Beast” ECW, WCW, WWF and NWA titles, but it was not enough to take ICW’s richest prize from the New Phenom. Galloway once again endured and proved himself to be The Man at the expense of ECW’s final champion.

Though Galloway had shown great resolve and fighting spirit by taking on a deadly opponent he had no obligation to face, there was something different about him on this night. He had no patience for pandering to the Glasgow fans and even spat at Damo, who again was keeping a close eye from the commentary table. To the delight of those who packed out a building ICW had long outgrown, a bitter Rhino used Damo’s distraction to hit Galloway with a second Gore, and Damo took this opportunity to give the wounded Galloway a reality check: “Look at you, Drew, desperate to be a hero in front of these people, but they don’t even like you!” Damo had done some bad things but he wasn’t wrong here, and it seems something finally clicked in the mind of the champion.

Challengers like Hardy, Sabu, Rhino, End and Jester had helped flesh Galloway’s reign out into something very special, but it was clear that some shows were bigger than others. Renfrew and Coffey had been the truest threats to the champion’s reign, and Damo was now on this shortlist as well. 

Galloway entered this match with a far more antagonistic approach to his unappreciative audience. If they didn’t value his efforts, then why try? Galloway was still going to fight like hell, but he was doing it to win, not to impress fickle ingrates who’d never done a thing. Standing now across the ring from the monstrous Beast of Belfast was as good a time as any to decide that daft chants and middle fingers were the least of his worries. 

The two men had a great match with Damo demonstrating supernatural endurance for Galloway’s offence. Despite this, the champion looked to have had it won after a vicious curbstomp, but referee Thomas Kearins, having received an errant boot to the face, was in no shape to count. Damo took advantage and went coast-to-coast with a crushing VanDamoNator that kept the champion’s shoulders down long enough for a second referee to make it to the ring and count the three. Everyone in the building thought they had a new ICW World Heavyweight Champion–all but one. GM Lightning informed Damo that only one referee had been sanctioned for this contest, and no one would make the count but him.

Damo had been right. Whether Galloway knew it or not, Lightning had been protecting his champion after all, but in that moment all the two heavyweights could do was keep fighting. It once again looked as though Galloway had his challenger beat when he showed tremendous strength to hit Thee Move (Galloway’s Tombstone Piledriver)…but then the lights went out.

As light returned to the O2 ABC, Jester was staring a hole through his former friend. A year before, the lights had cut for Galloway to make his return at this very event, and the crowd was overjoyed to see him both save and savage Jester. On this night the shoe was on the other foot, and those same fans who’d welcomed Galloway back from the WWE were instead telling him now to “go away back to TNA.” Rudo dashed to the ring to keep Jester away from Galloway, but Jester was not here to seek management’s advice. Damo slowly got to his feet while the former friends sized one another up, and the crowd waited to see which man would land the first blow. Instead, Jester denied Damo’s destiny with a shot below the belt that allowed Galloway to hit another Future Shock DDT. A recovering Kearins made the second and final three count of the match. Lightning, Jester and Galloway embraced and celebrated with champagne as they mocked the fans. Commentary’s “Wizard of Wit” William Grange remarked, “They’re as thick as thieves in the middle of that ring, and thieves is the operative word.” We were witnessing the formation of what would soon be known as The Black Label. 

_{“ICW suffers at times from an inability for its fanbase to see past the end of their own beaks. I say that as a fan myself. Sometimes you can get so wrapped up in something, anything that you see as a threat to it becomes something that warrants hostility and even though Drew Galloway saw TNA as a platform to elevate himself and in turn ICW, a percentage of the ICW fans didn’t quite see it that way. Drew appearing on and becoming a focal point of TNA was a conflict of interests to them and it became a stick that was used to beat him with. Some might have been a bit hurt at that. Grafting all over the globe representing ICW as best he could and anytime he came back to Glasgow he was told to bolt.}

_{Some might have put the petted lip on but Drew became something else. Drew became a bastard. Drew joined auld mates Jack Jester and Red Lightning to form The Black Label and well, The Black Label fucked shit up for a long time. They laughed at anyone who dared to take umbrage with them fucking shit up. Drew was no longer all about getting SCAAAAAATLAND to become a major factor on the wrestling circuit, Drew was all about one thing. Drew was about Drew. Drew was about holding on to the ICW Title at all costs.” – Snapmare Necks (February 2018)}

Galloway had done all he could to elevate ICW and its championship. He’d taken the title across the world, he’d done mountains of media and he’d talked himself into a frenzy as the company’s ambassador. ICW’s roster and audience had the benefits of a World Heavyweight Championship, increased viewership, record attendance, a veteran locker room leader, viral videos, more headlines, a recognisable champion who was on international television every week and the biggest event schedule in the company’s history. Galloway hadn’t done all of this, but he’d done a lot. And he’d continue–but it would be for himself and his pals in the Black Label, the only ones who still believed in him. As a triumphant Galloway shouted over to the commentary table on the night: “Drew Galloway is still champion. Piss on me? I piss on them.”

_{“He was exactly the leader we needed at the time. For me personally, he was fighting to get me opportunities. I feel like I’ll always be slightly indebted to him…It’s the next generation and the generation after that who are benefiting from Drew’s professionalism and his ability and his leadership. He’ll never take credit for this, that’s the best part of it, but a good leader leads from the front, and Drew’s the typical example of that.” – Former ICW World Heavyweight Champion Big Damo (WWE 24 Extra, October 2020)}

Gradomania:

_{“You might be the chosen one everywhere else…but here in ICW, I’m the fucking chosen one!” – Grado (A Horse, A Spoon & A Bucket, August 2015)}

Just two matches before Galloway had broken the hearts of whatever fans he still had left, Grado risked his life to defeat Bram and announced that he would be the man to face “whoever” the ICW Champion was come Fear & Loathing VIII on November 15th. With Galloway rolling through challengers globally for the better part of a year now, it was hard to imagine anyone but him would be standing opposite Grado at ICW’s biggest show, but the champion gave no response.

August meant Fringe Fest season, and ICW again had their residency at Edinburgh’s City Nightclub. Galloway missed the first two nights of the Flying Circus series (again off defending his ICW Championship in another promotion), but in his absence the Black Label continued to hold off Galloway’s most persistent threats when Jester defeated Damo in a Lumberjack Match mugging and Lightning threw Kid Fite and James R. Kennedy at Joe Coffey.

Galloway arrived for The Ministry Of Silly Headlocks to face Coffey in a rematch from BarraMania. Uncharacteristically, this was the first non-title singles bout of Galloway’s ICW reign, something which was practically unthinkable just weeks prior. It went to a No Contest due to the Black Label’s involvement but remains memorable for what became the briefest face turn of Galloway’s career when he fired back at an audience member who’d crossed a very important line by throwing punches at the champion. ICW’s audience may not have liked Big Drew too much in those days, but they weren’t having that and chanted for him as he put the wee bam on his arse. Any goodwill Galloway had gained, however, quickly evaporated when he aided Lightning in an impromptu match against a battered Coffey.

A Horse, A Spoon And A Bucket was the final night of the residency, and it was a stacked card that featured a heap of title bouts and a welcome appearance from Irn Jew (Colt Cabana & Grado). Galloway would make his eighteenth title defence in the main event against Kris Travis, who was making an incredible return to the ring after beating cancer. Ugly though it was, Lightning alluded to Travis being another of his hand-picked opponents intended to preserve his meal ticket’s title reign. Travis, however, was a decorated wrestler for a reason, and though he fell short in his singles ICW debut, he impressed even the merciless Black Label and proved himself worthy of the main event. Tragically, this would be the penultimate match of the late Travis’ career as he was forced to retire in September when his cancer returned. Travis passed in March of the following year and is so missed.

The night Galloway faced Travis was also the night ICW came together against the Black Label. Travis, Joe Coffey and Damo all stared daggers through the champion and his entourage as Grado demanded his challenge be answered:

_{“McIntyre…Chosen One…How’s your future endeavours treating you? Because I’ll tell you something: They don’t want you back, we don’t want you here–but I want you on the 15th! IT’S YERSEL!” – Grado (A Horse, A Spoon & A Bucket, August 2015)}

Against Lightning’s protests, Galloway “the wrestler” accepted the contest with Grado “the clown.” Grado was all heart and charisma, and though he’d come beyond close to dethroning ICW Champions in the past (Galloway included), he’d never gotten the job done, and any sympathy or compassion Galloway had shown Grado in their prior encounters was out of the question now. ICW’s two biggest names for the biggest show made business sense, and the champion understood that while Grado could bring the fans to their feet at the first notes of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” he was better. He was Drew Galloway. The champion didn’t have time to think about Grado for long, however; he had flights to make for Pro Wrestling Guerrilla’s Battle of Los Angeles and the main event of TNA’s Bound for Glory.

When Galloway returned to ICW for the Road To Fear & Loathing Tour, he had aspirations of holding yet more gold. At The Lorraine Kelly Experience, the Black Label challenged Polo Promotions for the ICW Tag Team Championships during their historic 413-day reign (still a record). Earlier in the night, Lightning set Damo and Grado against one another before stealing wins over both. Grado wasn’t too chuffed about this and in the main event gave a wee bit of assistance to Mark Coffey (known as “The Real ICW Champion” due to his penchant for defeating ICW’s top champions), who was then able to hand Galloway his first pinfall loss since his return to ICW. “Who bad? We bad!”

Galloway’s first defeat left him black affronted and wanting his pound of flesh but he had no time for distractions and left Grado to his Black Label compatriots. At One Fall Brawl in Newcastle, Jester took his revenge on Grado, freeing Galloway to focus on the considerable test of Rampage Brown. Brown was one of the few men in the UK who could stand toe to toe with him physically, and Galloway resisted putting the title on the line until some choice words from Rampage hurt the champion’s pride. With some timely assistance from Jester, the champion retained for the nineteenth time. This would not be their last encounter, however, as Galloway Vs. Rampage proved to be a popular matchup for promoters, with Premier British Wrestling, Preston City Wrestling, International Pro Wrestling: UK and WhatCulture Pro Wrestling booking this heavyweight clash on their premiere events in England, Scotland and the United States.

The following night in Southampton at Bazooko Circus, the anarchist turned ambassador of British wrestling Doug Williams was also able to cheek his way into a World Heavyweight Championship match in his ICW debut. Having had the benefit of his tutelage in the FWA Academy, Galloway rightly held a lot of respect for Williams, and the former Ring of Honor Pure Champion showed just why he’d been one of the few UK wrestling rebuilders to truly endure both at home and abroad. Ultimately, a Claymore and two Future Shock DDTs kept the younger man on track for the biggest match in Scottish wrestling history. Galloway hadn’t shown much beyond disdain for anyone outside of the Black Label over the last few months but he extended a hand to Williams, their bond unbroken.

Despite continuing to make it through main events with his title reign uninterrupted, Galloway became more resolute in his refusals to defend the championship. He’d gone well beyond the terms of his contract, and he had no interest in having his Fear & Loathing main event stolen from him by an upset in an English B-town.

Instead of title matches, Galloway began granting title opportunities. If someone could beat Galloway, then they could challenge him for the belt at a later date. The first of these bouts was against “The Villain” Marty Scurll in London at the beyond-unfortunately-named Barely Legal Tender. Galloway didn’t do it all alone, but Scurll would not earn a future title shot. Earlier in the evening, Galloway had finally gotten his hands on Grado in a vicious backstage assault. It remained to be seen if there was anything Grado could do to match his larger opponent, but his motivation to do so had to be growing.

Guts and passion were two of Grado’s greatest attributes, and win or lose he was loved and admired by an ever-growing ICW fanbase. But to be the World Heavyweight Champion he didn’t need to be loved, he needed to be victorious. And he hadn’t been. He was on a five-match losing streak, while Galloway was seemingly unbeatable.

While Galloway was away defending the ICW World Heavyweight Championship at a sold-out show in Germany, Grado finally turned things around at Where the Buffalo Roam in Liverpool when he and Rockstar Spud overcame the challenge of The 55 (Kid Fite & Sha Samuels).

Due to a travel disaster the following day, Galloway, who had flown from Kiel to Norwich, was just about the only ICW talent to make it to Appetite for Destruction for showtime while the rest of the roster were trapped on the side of the road. Eventually, a hastily dressed roster made it to the University of East Anglia, but not before Galloway held court in the ring and began issuing open challenges to anyone in the building. Without footage there’s perhaps elements of a tall tale to these stories, but some reports claim Galloway participated in as many as three pre-show ICW World Heavyweight Championship matches against ICW ring crew, an audience member (Damo trainee Matt Daly) and Polo Promotions’ Coach Trip. Regardless of whether Galloway made three one-sided defences or just the one or two, he would only be running up his own score at this point with an unprecedented twenty-plus title retentions. This needs must pre-show is also notable for featuring the first and only dark matches in the title’s sixteen-year history so far.

With the advertised card finally in motion, Galloway wasn’t feeling quite so generous come the main event. He offered “The Bollocks” Kenny Williams the same opportunity he’d offered Scurll in London, and the former ICW Zero-G Champion took it. Williams showed a lot of fire and drive to get Galloway on the ropes and to prove he really was The Bollocks, but thanks yet again to a distraction from “Big Kink” Jester, Williams also failed to best the World’s champion. 

The next day, in what seemed to be a theme for the weekend, another travel issue kept the Denmark-bound Galloway grounded in the UK and caused him to be stripped of both his DPW Heavyweight and UEWA European Heavyweight Championships. As much as Galloway wasn’t an especially friendly guy at this time, he was still a hard worker, so when unable to make his overseas commitments, he headed straight to Sheffield for a surprise appearance at When the Sun Goes Down. Interrupting a scheduled bout between Damo and Gunn, Galloway added himself to the match (non-title, of course). Damo appeared to have grabbed one of Galloway’s promised title matches by pinning Gunn in the Triple Threat, but Galloway moved the goalposts an inch or two when he informed Damo that pinning Gunn didn’t meet the requirements.

With Fear & Loathing VIII now so close and Grado outdoing the likes of Renfrew and Joe Coffey, Galloway too had to get himself back into winning ways after a rare loss. In Manchester, he teamed with Jester to defeat Tommy End & Jimmy Havoc at Live Forever, and on Halloween Galloway (out guising as Grado) defeated Spud at Imaginationland in Birmingham. 

On the final night of the tour in what could have been a disaster for the champion’s physical wellbeing, the Black Label again got one over on Damo in the non-title main event of Get My Rocks Off. Grado attempted to intervene in the post-match assault but was left a bloody mess by Jester’s corkscrew. While his plucky underdog challenger bled on the mat, Galloway could smile confidently on his way into his historic title defence.

Wish It Away:

The day finally came on November 15th 2015. Insane Championship Wrestling had gone from bringing 73 folk to Maryhill Community Central Halls to selling out Scotland’s largest exhibition centre, the SECC.

In what was probably the biggest wrestling match to ever see a member of the commentary team yell “Wanker!” at the senior official during the introductions, Cassidy announced Grado as “weighing in tonight at who gives a fuck?” while David Grimason of the band Psyko Dalek simply called Galloway “the best in the fucking world” as he performed “Wish It Away” to lead the champion to the ring. Galloway wore the inverted Saltire white-and-blue trunks from his first WrestleMania appearance, just as he had for his momentous matches with Gargano and Renfrew, signaling how important this event was to him.

The New Phenom overpowered and outwrestled The Stevenston Dream in the opening moments, and though Grado caught Galloway off guard by throwing hauns with uncharacteristic aggression, the Fucking Business nearly broke 4,000 hearts in a matter of minutes when he went for his patented Double Arm DDT early. Grado escaped it, but a caber toss off a Belly-to-Belly Suplex put him back on his arse as reality looked to be setting in. Whatever carriage had taken Grado to the SECC that night appeared ready to turn into a pumpkin before the challenger shocked the world with a second rope Grado-Rana. He followed the first Hurricanrana of his career with a diving Cannonball from the apron to the floor to put the champion on his back and the crowd on their feet.

_{“He told me before the match, ’I shoot you in the ropes, you come back and give me the hurricanrana.’ I went, ‘Fuck off. I can’t fucking hurricanrana you, ya dafty.’ He goes, ‘No, we’ll do it.’ I was nervous before the match…I’m going, ‘Well, this is going to be shite. I’m going to make a cunt of this hurricanrana.’ It was the slowest, daftest, shitest, fucking hurricanrana, but it actually worked. The Drew match was tremendous.” – Grado (Sportskeeda, September 2019)}

These bright spots were few and far between, however, as the champion deflected many of Grado’s best efforts by simply muscling him up into devastating manoeuvres like a Tilt-A-Whirl Backbreaker and a German Suplex into the turnbuckles. When the champion finally grew weary of playing with his food, he looked to crush the skull of the challenger with a Future Shock from the second rope. Instead, Grado took Galloway Fae the Tap End of Stevenston to the Rock Bottom in a pivotal moment. 

With gravity on his side once again, Grado’s burst of adrenaline brought out his best as he followed his Rock Bottom with a Dusty Ayrshire Dream Elbow, a Stevenston Roundabout (Grado’s version of the F5) and his Roll & Slice Corner Senton. Grado’s offence gave some fans a reason to believe, but from the commentary table, Grange remarked, “There’s nothing more dangerous than a wounded predator,” and the champion proved that point soon after.

With Galloway back in control, the match answered questions from their original encounter at The Princess is in Another Castle. As he had before, Grado endured the champion’s Piledrivers, but this time the champion showed no mercy when he went to take the challenger’s head off with a steel chair. Grado was still able to land the blast to the baws that had brought him so close to connecting his Wee Boot to the champion’s jaw seven months prior–and this time, “straps doon, tits oot,” he hit it. “Wan…Tae…AWWW.” Grado’s best wasn’t good enough. 

When Grado went for something he’d not yet tried, his Get Tae Yer Bed GTS variation, Galloway countered with a picture-perfect Future Shock DDT, but this time it was Galloway’s best shot that wasn’t enough. A desperate Galloway followed that with a frightening Air Raid Crash onto a seated steel chair, but Grado again persevered. The champion’s frustration boiled over, and he clocked Kearins with a right hand for not calling a two a three. 

As the match broke down, Lightning and Jester rushed to ringside to assist the champion. These tactics had helped Galloway survive many times before, but there had been no Commissioner Foley on those nights. This time the Black Label were handled by the four-time World Heavyweight Champion and Mr. Socko. Galloway, distracted and disgusted by the melee, turned around, swinging a chair only to be met by a Wee Boot that sent the steel into his own skull. Just three seconds later, Kirkwood was screaming, “It’s happened! It’s happened! It’s happened!” as Grado, in his seventh shot at holding ICW’s ultimate honour, had finally gotten past “close.” This was a dream young Graeme Stevely wouldn’t have to wake up from. It was finally real.

_{“Rapturous scenes in front of 4,000. It felt right. Grado has always had all these amazing attributes, he’s always been the most charismatic guy on the roster, but he needed a truly selfless baddie to create that wonderful moment and that’s what Drew was on the night. His shift that night was to make the good guy look fucking amazing and it was a shift that led Mick Foley to compare their match to Ric Flair Vs. Dusty Rhodes. The highest of all the praise.” – Snapmare Necks (February 2018)}

Drew Galloway had elevated the championship like no other, making more defences than any champion before or since. He’d seen ICW’s schedule explode during his reign with record crowds for his main events, and just as he’d been ICW’s first Heavyweight Champion in 2006, he was their first World Heavyweight Champion in 2015 due to his hard work overseas. Ultimately, though, nothing could last forever, and no one could deny Gradomania–not even the New Phenom.

Broken Dreams:

When Galloway returned to the independents in 2014, he had made his cause the elevation of the EVOLVE and ICW World Heavyweight Championships. He’d won five other titles in this time, but it was clear from the defences he’d made and the bookings he’d prioritised that these two constants had meant the most to him. During their summer feud, Damo had warned this belt collector of a domino effect, saying that once he lost one title, they would all soon follow. Eight days before the bout with Grado, Galloway had attempted to regain his EVOLVE Championship from Thatcher in yet another losing effort. The flailing former World Champion was now only recognised as SWA’s Scottish Heavyweight Champion, and just two weeks after Fear & Loathing VIII that honour would instead belong to Mark Coffey, who again pinned Scotland’s biggest wrestling export in the West Central Lowlands of Renfrewshire.

Galloway needed to rebuild, but his efforts continued to backfire. He and combinations of Brodus, Carlito & Matt Cross went 0-3 in main events against Blue Demon Jr., Dr. Wagner Jr. & Rey Mysterio Jr. on the Que Viva El Rey Tour de Mexico. He gatecrashed the ROH/PCW SuperShow of Honor 2 event only to fall to Noam Dar. He made his final 2015 ICW appearance in a rematch with Dar at a Friday Night Fight Club taping on December 6th but was again defeated by the young “Jewdi Master” despite booting him from The Garage’s balcony to the floor in an iconic ICW moment.

Galloway’s tremendous 2015 met its disappointing end when Dave Mastiff cheated Galloway out of a victory in his hometown of Ayr at Jingle All the Galloway, a show named in his honour by Lionheart’s Pro Wrestling Elite promotion. He needed to make a change, or all would be for nothing.

Drew Gone Away (Back to TNA):

Before Galloway had turned on the fans, many had turned on him. Musical chants of “Drew Galloway, Galloway, Drew Galloway!” had mutated into “Drew Go Away, Go Away, Back to TNA!” and that’s exactly what he did.

His early 2016 saw a lot of success. Right back in the thick of things, he defeated Jack Evans at PWG’s Lëmmy on January 2nd. While in TNA Kurt Angle not only handpicked Galloway as one of his farewell opponents but thought enough of the Scotsman to team with him to challenge The Wolves (Davey Richards & Eddie Edwards) for the TNA World Tag Team Championships on PPV. The Wolves retained, but Galloway bounced back at an IMPACT Wrestling TV taping the following day when he captured one of four Feast or Fired briefcases and feasted when the contract within guaranteed him a TNA World Heavyweight Championship match at a time of his choosing.

During a late January TNA tour of the UK, “The Captain” Drew Galloway main evented IMPACT TV in Wembley Arena (a loss to his devious rival “The Miracle” Mike Bennett), was given the honour of a second match with Angle in which he defeated the Olympic gold medalist by submission and got his revenge on Bennett when he eliminated him to win the titular gauntlet battle royal of the Joker’s Wild 4 PPV.

In EVOLVE, he returned to winning ways too when he and Johnny Gargano became the inaugural EVOLVE Tag Team Champions, but even while he celebrated as a fan favourite with the adored “Johnny Wrestling,” he was raising a middle finger to the ICW faithful. He’d been announced for the 2016 Square Go! match but had instead put EVOLVE first and taunted Glasgow with a pre-recorded video.

Much was changing across the Atlantic Ocean. As Galloway’s EVOLVE vindication began, Grado’s fairytale title run came to an end at just 70 days when Renfrew righted what he surely saw as a wrong at the 5th Annual Square Go! in the Barrowlands. With Gradomania suffering from the Renfrew effect, Galloway was ready to conquer the land of Insanity once again. 

The returning “Insane Phenom” defeated Mark Coffey on Fight Club and hit the road for the Hey Look! It’s That Mad Wrestling Thing Aff The Telly Tour, which further expanded ICW’s reach out of the UK and into Ireland. Galloway was immediately granted a shot against the new champion at Whatever Happened To The ICW Lads? and while thirteen months before he had defeated Renfrew to retain his Heavyweight Championship, it was now the Batman of Bedlam who narrowly survived his challenger in Liverpool.

Galloway hadn’t gotten it done with the big one on the line, but remained competitive for the remainder of the tour by defeating fellow ICW originals Gunn at The Big Elbowski and Dar at It’s Just A Big Stereo Hangin’ From A Tree. By the end of the weekend, Renfrew’s 34-day reign of terror would be over as Galloway’s fiercest foe Damo had finally claimed the World Heavyweight Championship in his home city of Belfast.

Galloway’s return to ICW had achieved mixed results, but in the United States he was on the cusp of one of his greatest achievements. Putting his Feast or Fired contract to good use, he broke “the Feast or Fired curse” by becoming the first and only man to successfully cash in his briefcase for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship when he defeated Matt Hardy in eighteen seconds to earn his place as the first Scottish TNA Champion. In the coming weeks he successfully defended the title against Jeff Hardy, Matt Hardy, Tyrus, Bobby Lashley and Eli Drake on TNA TV. 

He wouldn’t have the length of reign that he did in ICW, but in his three months as the TNA’s top guy, he set the record for most independent international title defences at that time. TNA was arguably the second biggest North American promotion in 2016, certainly it was the most accessible in the UK (through Challenge TV and annual arena tours)–and Galloway was on top.

Back home in ICW, the image of the TNA title stirred anything but national pride. At Pin Pals in London, Galloway competed in a Four-Way match with Grado, Jester and Damo for the ICW Championship. Damo would retain, but the heels assaulted Damo in retribution. When Galloway raised both the TNA and ICW titles, fans began pelting him with drinks, prompting an expanded Black Label to jump the barricade and confront this hostile audience. If the fans didn’t like Galloway as the ICW Champion then they loathed him as the TNA Champion, and things were getting ugly.

_{“Like us or hate us, I don’t care–you don’t ever provoke us because we will fuck you up…I fucking hate London. Look at this shit. You people have no class and no fucking respect for professional wrestling. You can go suck my dick you pricks.” – Drew Galloway (Pin Pals, March 2016)}

The sight of Galloway with the two World Heavyweight Championships held aloft was powerful image, and he intended to make it official in the main event of BarraMania II against Damo. In what had been a bad night for defending champions, a seemingly invulnerable Damo defied the odds. Jester, Lightning, tables, chairs and kendo sticks put his reign in jeopardy, but he endured it all. When Galloway was knocked loopy by a steel pipe to the cranium, Damo locked in his Cú Chulainn’s Wrath submission. Grange asserted that “Phenoms don’t quit,” but with head trauma and a lack of oxygen, they may eventually stop breathing. The challenger was unable to defend himself, and Kearins called for the bell; Damo had finally beaten Galloway one on one. 

This was in many ways the end of an era. After three failed attempts, Galloway would never again challenge for the ICW World Heavyweight Championship that he had been so central to. After this defeat, the Insane Phenom seemed to decide that if he couldn’t represent the company then he wanted to rule it, with his focus now squarely on establishing the Black Label’s dominance and completing their hostile takeover. 

As ICW began airing in 38 countries through the Fight Network, Galloway and the Label traded wins with Dallas loyalists all over the UK, as they battled for ownership of ICW. A notable night was Shug’s Hoose Party 3 (ICW’s live PPV debut via FITE TV); Samuels switched sides to help Dallas outdo the Label in tag team action, costing Rudo his majority share of the company, but Galloway’s gang had the last laugh. The night’s main event saw Joe Coffey defeat Damo to finally hold the title he had long sought, but Square Go! briefcase holder Wolfgang picked the bones to bring the championship back to the Black Label.

Galloway continued to spread his efforts between EVOLVE, ICW, TNA and the upstart WCPW promotion, which was pretty much an overnight success due to the popularity of the WhatCulture network. Unfortunately, it was here that Galloway sustained a nasty back injury which looked to be career-threatening but thankfully only took him out of action for two months. Though a relatively short period of time considering how bleak things had looked, missing a few weeks on Galloway’s ridiculous schedule meant losing out on opportunities at the IMPACT Grand Championship, XWA British Heavyweight Championship (a continuation of the FWA’s title lineage) and the wXw Unified World Heavyweight Championship.

Those matches were far from insignificant, and Galloway was no doubt frustrated to be hosting intermission raffles instead of capturing independent European titles once held by Bryan Danielson, Big Van Walter, El Generico, Christopher Daniels, Robbie Brookside, Claudio Castagnoli, Alex Shelley and many others. But if there was one event that would hurt Galloway the most to miss it had to be Fear & Loathing IX, and for just a moment in a gut-wrenching promo, Galloway brought the ICW faithful back on his side when he announced that due to complications with his injury, he had no choice but to miss much more than just that… 

He was talking shite, and he showed how well he’d healed when he cracked a conciliatory Mark Dallas in the jaw. Though time away had healed his physical wounds, the Insane Phenom clearly still carried the hurt of ICW turning against him, and he’d stop at nothing to claim it for himself. He was now more than happy to give Glasgow a reason to despise him. Galloway would be at Fear & Loathing IX, and hell was coming with him.

On November 20th 2016, ICW brought their premiere PPV to the SSE Hydro. Since the Hydro’s 2013 opening, it had been the Glasgow host for both TNA and WWE. In 2015, TNA had brought in 1,500 while NXT attracted 4,500. Despite ICW’s strict 18+ only entry rules, they filled a reported 6,193 seats that night in what was called the biggest independent UK wrestling event in 34 years. ICW had imported Ricochet, Kurt Angle and Team 3D (Brother Devon & Brother Ray) to help bring in a broader audience, but the card was overwhelmingly homegrown talent, and in every case, the Americans fell to the Scots.

Of Galloway’s four Fear & Loathing appearances, this would be his first without the ICW title in hand, but the stakes were as high as ever. In an Eight Man Elimination Tag Team match, The Black Label’s Galloway, Bram, Jester & Kid Fite went up against the uneasy alliance of Team Dallas (Renfrew, DCT, Grado & Samuels) for 100% ownership of ICW. 

It was a back-and-forth encounter with both teams scoring rapid fire eliminations; Fite ousted Samuels only to be sent to the showers himself by DCT in under two minutes. When Jester eliminated Grado to break a tie in the match’s ninth minute, Team Dallas appeared all but doomed with a lone Renfrew facing off against two of the most dominating ICW champions in history. Dallas’ boys had resolved to play as dirty as the Black Label, though, and just as Jester looked to finish Renfrew off, Grado snuck back into the ring to blast Big Kink with a Wee Boot leaving Galloway and Renfrew all alone.

Chosen Again:

Following a second consecutive historic but heartbreaking Fear & Loathing loss, Galloway was absent from ICW cards for the next two and a half months. Now the WCPW World Champion, his UK priorities lay where he was better appreciated. Again filling the travelling champion role he had in ICW, TNA and EVOLVE, he defended in Scotland against Broken Matt Hardy for BCW and Anthony Bowens in the Bronx for Battle Club Pro. In a run which had several parallels with his ICW reign, Galloway battled yet another ECW original in Bully Ray as well as familiar opponents Joe Coffey, Mark Coffey, Rampage, Doug Williams, Hendry, Will Ospreay (winner of the promotion’s “Match of the Year” Award) and Ricochet. In this time, he also resolved some unfinished business when he defeated Moose to spend five days (equating to six weeks of television) as the IMPACT Grand Champion in his final appearances for the promotion now known as Impact Wrestling.

Returning at last to ICW for the 6th Annual Square Go!, Galloway made his presence felt immediately by devastating a field of favourites and eliminating Jimmy Havoc from this 30-man over-the-top-rope affair. Despite a surprising ovation and a dominant performance, Galloway ultimately failed to get back into title contention when Jester, the rumble’s final entrant, ended Galloway’s night just a little early. The issue between these two needed to be settled, and a grudge match was set for BarraMania 3. 

Though his ICW schedule was reduced and he was spending prolonged periods of time outside of the title scene, Galloway was clearly still one of the company’s top names and surely was due to be figured back into the main event scene in the coming months. Things changed in a heartbeat when the man who had recently been an influential pillar of ICW, EVOLVE, TNA and WCPW appeared front row at NXT TakeOver: Orlando to signal his return to WWE on the eve of WrestleMania 33. 

Despite debuting on the NXT brand in April 2017 with dominant wins over Oney Lorcan, Andrade “Cien” Almas and Sean Maluta, Big Drew honoured his independent bookings before his departure–just as he had a decade before when first signed to WWE as the inaugural ICW Champion in 2007. For his farewell run, he returned to WCPW to drop the title to Martin Kirby in a 30-Man Rumble and go out on his back for Cody Rhodes. In EVOLVE, the place where it all began, he helped establish the newly created WWN Championship by putting over Matt Riddle in his second title defence.

The most surprising thing about Galloway’s final independent dates was that he was still approved to face his nemesis in a frightful Barbed Wire Match for ICW. But given the hatred, friendship, and brutal violence shared between these two proud fighters, it was a fight that needed to happen, to its bitter end, one last time.

A bloodied Jester suffered for his art in this final encounter by getting his shoulder up through four Future Shock DDTs, but a barbed baseball bat to the skull kept him down to finish what became ICW’s most widely viewed match of all time (8.5+ million YouTube views today). The two men would embrace again as friends while the Barrowlands, which had once reverberated with the sounds of boos for Galloway, instead echoed chants of “Thank you, Drew.”

Just weeks later, Galloway’s contributions to his country’s scene were recognised when, in a class of his own, he became inaugural inductee into the Wrestlers Reunion Scotland George Kidd Scottish Wrestling Hall of Fame on June 25th 2017.

Legacy:

Ayrshire’s Drew Galloway again became Drew McIntyre. Between 2009 and 2010, he had done things in WWE that were unheard of for a Scottish wrestler. In 2017, he resumed a journey that saw him accomplish feats no British wrestler ever had before and only a select few wrestlers from anywhere in the world ever would.

“The Scottish Warrior” ran through the black-and-gold brand to become the NXT Champion. Returning to Monday Night RAW, he teamed with Dolph Ziggler to battle all-timers like The Revival and The Shield for the WWE RAW Tag Team Championships. He won the truly great 2020 Royal Rumble match by eliminating Brock Lesnar, Ricochet, The Miz, King Corbin, Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns. He became the first British Triple Crown Winner and WWE Champion at WrestleMania 36 when he defeated The Beast Incarnate in the main event of that unprecedented weekend. He carried RAW through the thankless Performance Center and ThunderDome eras as a two-time Champion, rightly winning the “Superstar of the Year” Slammy Award in the process. Since returning to the world’s largest wrestling company, he’s worked with and defeated legends of both WWE and WCW as well as some of the best talent you can see today in AEW, NJPW, Impact, NWA or any current WWE brand.

From being on the perpetual losing end of Superstars and Main Event matches, McIntyre became a true main event star. Galloway once headlined the 2006 Fear & Loathing for 73 fans in Maryhill, but in 2022, he closed out Clash at the Castle in Cardiff for an adoring crowd of 62,296. McIntyre still has a far from broken dream to return home with a WWE World Championship after spending 300+ days as The Man locked down in the empty arena era. Despite setbacks and bad luck for both himself and the world at large, it’s hard to imagine that his moment won’t someday come.

Much like EVOLVE, ICW was a place that gave Big Drew the freedom and time to become the star he is today. A natural mentor and locker room leader, he led both companies through significant growth periods. He showed the world how comfortably World Championship titles rest on his shoulders and that he could endure one of the most gruelling schedules of any wrestler in the world. He learned to adapt and improvise while facing off with fickle and even physically violent fans. Self-described as a quiet and introverted man, he grew comfortable staring into a sea of middle fingers and learned to rally a gloomy audience into chanting for both him and the company he was representing on any night, in any town, on any continent.

His presence is still felt in ICW. He helped elevate some talent to the biggest moments of their careers. He beat people all over the UK but he wasn’t selfish, and the majority of those he worked with would go on to greater successes in ICW and in some cases WWE, ROH, Impact and AEW as well. If his sudden return to ICW had put the brakes on the championship pursuits of Grado, Renfrew, Damo, Joe Coffey and Wolfgang, then Galloway played his part in them getting their moments. He’d been willing to return favours too, playing the role of defeated challenger for Damo and Renfrew and taking losses on ICW’s biggest shows.

Galloway was ICW’s champion for one of the biggest periods of growth in the history of the company. Though there have been some excellent reigns, Drew Galloway, in my opinion, set the standard as the greatest champion that ICW has ever had.

Within a year of his second ICW departure, the little Glasgow promotion that could honoured the efforts and accomplishments of the biggest star they had helped to produce. In February 2018, Galloway became the second of as yet only two inductees into the ICW Hall of Fame. Later that same year, ICW’s all-ages Wrestling Experience Scotland brand hosted The Drew Galloway Invitational, a sixteen-man, two-night tournament won by ”The Bone Collector” Irving Garrett which featured a number of Glasgow Pro Wrestling Asylum trainees who later became ICW regulars. Not only did fellow ICW talent Scott Renwick, Adam Shame, Viper, Lionheart and Noam Dar follow Galloway into the George Kidd Scottish Wrestling Hall of Fame, but in 2021, WRS created the Drew Galloway Shield, a Big Drew sanctioned trophy awarded annually to individuals who, like Galloway himself, have given much to the wrestling business. The indispensable Scottish Wrestling Network, too, has been unambiguous about the value of Galloway’s contribution; in 2018, he was not only inducted into their Hall of Fame but received their Outstanding Recognition Award for Extraordinary Service as well. Even years after Galloway departed, his ICW reign served as inspiration for the globe-trotting title run of Leyton Buzzard in 2022 and 2023 (See: “Distant Shores: The ICW World Heavyweight Championship Reign of “El Capitan” Leyton Buzzard”).

ICW’s relationship with WWE developed into something quite significant. Due to agreements made with key UK indies after the launch of NXT UK, we’d see “The Bruiserweight” defend the WWE United Kingdom Championship on an ICW card, the ICW title defended in a WWE ring, and HHH would make an almost unfathomable ICW appearance, all before the end of 2017. Come 2020, not only could Noam Dar (now a 205 Live/NXT UK Superstar) be permitted to wrestle for ICW and win a long overdue World Championship, but ICW would stream their events on the WWE Network, bringing the likes of Veronica LeStrange, Grado, Chris Toal, DCT, JAXN, Session Moth Martina, Jester, Coach Trip, ”The Pharaoh of Filth” Stevie Boy, Jennifer Louise, ”The Video Nasty” Rory Coyle, ”Mother of Chaos” Kasey, The Wee Man and others into the homes of the unsuspecting.

Much of ICW’s roster found WWE opportunities through its UK expansion, and Kay Lee Ray, Noam Dar, Pete Dunne, Wolfgang, Mark Coffey, Nikki Cross, Doudrop, Trent Seven and Tyler Bate all won titles and tournaments in WWE through the UK brand and beyond. There are more Scottish wrestlers on American TV today than ever before, with Cross, Doudrop, Dar, Jack Morris, Gallus, Alba Fyre, Isla Dawn, Joe Hendry and McIntyre all now holding spots on the RAW, SmackDown, NXT, Pro Wrestling NOAH and Impact rosters.

UK wrestling is still in the process of rebuilding. The scene’s success led to contracts elsewhere for all of its top stars; the tragic passing of reigning the SWA, UEWA and ICW World Heavyweight Champion Adrian “Lionheart” McCallum devastated the scene on June 19th 2019; ambitious promotions like 5 Star Wrestling and Defiant Wrestling (formerly WCPW) were forced to shutter in 2018 and 2019 respectively, while COVID-19 forced other longstanding Scottish promotions into years of inactivity, if they ever returned at all. More importantly, the Speaking Out movement revealed a terrible darkness in UK wrestling, rightly exposing and (in not enough cases) exiling wrestling talents, promoters and personnel from an industry they should never have had a place in. It’s disturbing how many individuals mentioned in this article alone would be named in this long overdue reckoning.

This period of independent wrestling is one that I enjoyed the most, but reflecting on this time is bittersweet. Some of our UK heroes turned out to be anything but; we’ve lost people who should have had more time; many things happened to stall the growth of a scene that people cared so much about; there’s still a feeling of frustration that a moment which would have blown the roof off Cardiff’s Principality Stadium on September 3rd 2022 didn’t happen; a lot of UK talent are now without contracts, and there’s a lot of uncertainty. 

More personally, Galloway being away from his mother during her illness is something I can now relate to having lost my wee Glaswegian mum last year while I’m living in America, too. She liked hearing about “the big Scottish wrestler with the funny accent” (though she never trusted any wrestler was really from where they claimed after learning Roddy Piper was Canadian and her crush Kofi Kingston was not Jamaican). Distance has a strange effect on grief in my experience, and in some ways I was able to process some feelings by writing about these easier days.

Despite all that’s wrong, there are a lot of happy and beautiful memories, too. We got to see some good people succeed and watch what should have been the impossible become possible. Some of those who left for WWE opportunities are now returning as Galloway did, with invaluable experiences and better name recognition. They, too, have the opportunity to grow their scene and perhaps someday return to WWE undeniable. 

Within Insane Championship Wrestling, perhaps more than anywhere, Galloway reinvented himself as one of the best in the world. Whether he was a fiery brand ambassador or a twisted psychopath, he represented ICW across the world and got better and better until he truly proved what he said the night he came back:

 _{“Vince McMahon, the most ruthless man in the world, named me ‘The Chosen One’ for a reason…What’s best for business? When I’m used to the best of my ability, I am the fucking business.” – Drew Galloway (Shug’s Hoose Party, June 2014)}

So here we, here we, here we fucking go.

ICW Memories:

_{“I was essentially a small cog in the larger machine in ICW when Drew made his return and was on top. If Drew and Grado were Rock and Austin, then I was Val Venis. We never had a chance to have a singles match as he actually injured his neck the week before. Any time we had any physicality between us, his intensity was unmatched by anyone I’ve ever met. It was a learning experience being one of the up-and-comers witnessing what a true star looked like.}

_{ICW and British wrestling as a whole owe Drew a debt that can never be repaid. He took a regional title and turned it into a world title. When I became ICW champion, I felt a huge amount of pressure based on who had come before me. Even in my short reign, I felt I lived up to some of the standards that Drew set, but neither I nor anyone else has managed to surpass him. He’s the hardest act to follow for a reason.” – Former ICW World Heavyweight Champion DCT (November 2022)}

_{“At this time I was just starting out as ring crew, but in the time I had speaking with Drew he was a fountain of knowledge, and I consider him a vital part in the Scottish scene. Without Drew, the ICW title would not be called the World Heavyweight Championship. He took that title all over the world and defended it against everyone. It’s an honour to have my name on the same list of Champions as Drew Galloway.” – Current ICW World Heavyweight Champion (at time of publication) Kez Evans (November 2022)}

_{”I feel lucky to have had the chance to work with Drew between his first and second run with WWE. I wrestled Drew at WrestleZone in the North of Scotland and, whilst they are a great company with a big draw on the night, Drew went out of his way to give it a ‘big match’ feel by contacting the appropriate people and asking to defend the EVOLVE title. All of my experiences with Drew have been the same as this one: an incredible talent with a larger-than-life aura, trying to build up everyone around him.” – Former ICW Zero-G Champion & current UEWA European Heavyweight Champion Andy Roberts (November 2022)}

_{“My impression of Drew when I first met him was a complete professional. My only regret during the time he came to New York City for Warriors Of Wrestling was that I didn’t get to spend more time with him. To be so generous to bring over the ICW Championship and defend it here was just amazing. It felt like, and was for me, one of my biggest matches of my career and a definite shift in my mindset to a more confident Joey Ace all around. So Drew, thank you so much.” – North American Challenger for ICW Championship & former WOW Heavyweight Champion Joey Ace (November 2022)}

_{“He’s somebody that helped me a lot. He helped Killian Dain a lot. He helped the Coffey brothers a lot. He lifted us all up.” – Former WWE RAW Women’s Champion Nikki Cross (WWE 24 extra, October 2020)}

_{“My experience of working with Drew at this time was quite inspirational in seeing how hard one person can work. As well as representing ICW as its World Champion, he was seemingly simultaneously all around the world doing a similar thing for other wrestling companies. He’d often arrive backstage having flown in from somewhere, get any kind of sleep possible for a man of his size in sometimes cramped conditions, go out and have a world class match, then have to leave right after to fly off and work in some far-flung part of the world.}

_{Drew’s contribution to ICW was immediately apparent. The video clip of his return opened eyes around the world to both his main event credentials and the legitimacy of the company. Not only that, a guy as nice as Drew with his air of professionalism just brings a more positive atmosphere to the environment in general, and his reigns with the world title belt truly solidified it as something to be sought after. His defence against Grado in a Fear & Loathing main event is still a personal favourite of mine amongst ICW’s storied history.” – Neil “The Wee Man” Bratchpiece (November 2022)}

_{“I worked with Drew Galloway for the OCW Supershow in March 2015. I met him a few days before the show as he was one of the first of the big names, including Alberto El Patron, Ken Anderson and Scotty 2 Hotty. Though he was jet lagged, he was really giving and attentive in his interview for the OCW podcast, which I hosted at the time.}

_{Despite that, the fact that current OCW Champion Andy Phoenix would be dropping the OCW title to Drew that night was withheld from me, which I was salty about as a member of creative but as a fan watching from ringside, I kind of loved it–working in wrestling can sometimes dim the excitement of being a fan, which is largely why I left that side of it shortly thereafter. Though much of the action took part in the crowd and bar area, it was one of the best matches I had the privilege of watching live up to that point.” – Outback Championship Wrestling & Author of ‘A Diva Was a Female Version of a Wrestler’ Scarlett Harris (November 2022)}

_{“I learned so much working with Drew from 2014-2017. He contributed massively to the success of ICW, and helped bring everyone up a level. I felt like I improved every time I was in the ring with Drew, and the lessons learned from sitting under his learning tree were invaluable. In addition to helping me improve as a referee, he made a conscious effort to help build a culture that protected the authority of the referees, which I will always appreciate.} 

_{Without Drew there would be no World Title. The time he dedicated to making it a World Title demonstrated his commitment to the brand and its performers, and was a massive motivator for everyone involved in ICW at the time.” – Senior ICW referee Thomas Kearins (November 2022)}

_{“Years ago, a man called Drew McIntyre, he made this a recognised World Championship…He defended this title in five countries across three continents. He made this championship mean something. And now, I promise you that I will bring prestige back to this title; I will bring honour back to this title. I’m gonna show everyone that we are ICW and we are here!} 

_{2018 was the last time that this championship was defended outside the UK…Well, El Capitan has been champion for one week and I can confirm now I’ve got defences set-up in five different countries and two different continents! In two-weeks time, I defend this championship three times: three days, three defences, three different countries. I’m on some Ric Flair shit, baby! Woo!}

_{You know, they say it’s not the title that makes the man, it’s the man that makes the title. Well, this man is about to make this the most important championship in European wrestling today!”  – ICW World Heavyweight Champion (at time of quote) Leyton Buzzard (ICW Fight Club #246, January 2023)}

_{“Drew McIntyre was an absolute role model for all of Scottish wrestling, if not British wrestling…You’re seeing a crop of talent who came from underneath Drew’s presence, and now it’s our time to flourish and develop.” – Former ICW World Heavyweight Champion & current NXT UK Heritage Cup Champion (at time of publication) Noam Dar (WWE 24 extra, October 2020)}

Gallery of Insanity:

Thanks:

My thanks to the following people for sharing their memories and reflections on Drew Galloway and his ICW World Heavyweight Championship reign: 

Joey Ace (Twitter / Instagram) / Neil “The Wee Man” Bratchpiece (Twitter / Instagram / YouTube) / DCT (Twitter / Instagram) / Kez Evans (Twitter / Instagram) / Scarlett Harris (Twitter / The Scarlett Woman / Books) / Andy Roberts (Twitter / Instagram / Fife Pro Wrestling Asylum) 

Thank you to Thomas Kearins (Twitter / Instagram) for putting me in touch with the ICW roster.

Unlimited credit to Mr. David J. Wilson for documenting the history of ICW and Scottish wrestling as a whole better than any other with his photography.

Thank you to Kathleen Halliday for proofing and editing this epic saga of an article.

Links:

Drew McIntyre Online: Twitter / Instagram / Facebook / WWE Shop / “Drew McIntyre: A Chosen Destiny” (Simon & Schuster) / “ICW: The Best of Drew Galloway”

ICW Online: InsaneWrestling.co.uk / Fite+ / ICW On Demand / YouTube / Twitter / Facebook / Instagram / Tickets

Ecstasy of Gold Online: Twitter / Instagram / Facebook / Read: “Self-Chosen: The EVOLVE Championship Reign of Drew Galloway”

Sources / References / Citations Note:

This article is fully cited. You can find all sources linked via the bolded text above. For any corrections/questions, please feel free to submit them via the contact form.

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