Wade Barrett Talks His Main Roster Debut With The Nexus, Reason WWE Ended Bad News Barrett Gimmick, More

During a recent interview with The Buzzards Wrestling podcast, former WWE Superstar Wade Barrett discussed various topics. Here are the highlights:

On his main roster debut with The Nexus:

“It was really cool. Obviously, there was a lot of pressure on us as brand new guys and we’d literally been told by Vince (McMahon) before we went out that, we ‘better make this good, because if it isn’t good, you guys won’t be around for very long.’ So, that’s kind of hanging over you when you go out there and I think when we were out there and attacking the ring and smashing things up, we were so in the zone that we weren’t really paying too much attention to the reaction or the atmosphere or how it was being picked up. We were all just so focused on making sure we did what we’d all talked about beforehand. ‘I’m going to do this, you’re going to do this here, how about you do this?’ We had this thing outlined in our heads and we were so focused on making sure that we didn’t screw it up that by the time we go to the back, we hadn’t actually absorbed what was happening.

“But then when we got to the back, we were kind of given a standing ovation by the locker room and all the guys that were working there and people were kind of blown away by what they’d seen. Then they started showing replays of crowd reactions and stuff and that’s when it started to sink in that, ‘Woah, this was pretty big’ and then we realised afterwards, ‘Wow’, you know for us as young wrestlers, we’ve put up and taken down rings a million times by that point. That’s kind of part the breaking into the business, that’s what you have to do, you put up the ring, you know what it looks like when it’s taken apart.”

“What we didn’t think about was the fact that the entire WWE Universe or the fanbase had never seen a ring half taken down or they didn’t know what was underneath that blue canvas. They didn’t know there were boards underneath there and stuff like that, so the impact that had on that fanbase was way bigger than anything we could’ve ever imagined, just because they’d never seen something like that before.”

On the reason WWE ended the Bad News Barrett Gimmick:

“I was specifically told the reason I wasn’t allowed to say my catchphrase ‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news’ anymore was that it was getting a positive response and they wanted me to be a heel. I personally didn’t agree with that philosophy. I felt ‘Look, if they are going to cheer for me, they like this, let’s go with it. I’ve never been a babyface before, let’s go with it.’

“The decision was made above my pay grade that that wasn’t going to be the case and then I was Bad News Barrett, a guy who didn’t cut promos and wasn’t giving out bad news, so that kind of instigated the transition into a completely different character and the King run at that point, so for me personally, like I say, I didn’t agree with it but it wasn’t my decision to make ultimately.”