During a recent appearance on Talk Is Jericho, former WWE Superstar Wade Barrett revealed what made him decide to leave WWE.
Below are the highlights:
On the ‘Bad News Barrett’ character working for him:
“I loved Bad News Barrett. I’d say in my history of professional wrestling, the two most fun periods of my career, and I think most people expect me to say Nexus, but Nexus was definitely up there in terms of achievements, but I don’t ever think it was so much fun because of the pressure and that whole thing. And it felt like my feet didn’t touch the floor. But in terms of fun, the most fun I ever had was I did about six months worth of color commentary in FCW, which I loved.
And I was working under Dusty Rhodes in my earpiece, and I was working with Byron Saxton, who was the play-by-play guy and my instruction was simply to go out there, help the talent get over, and just have fun. And that’s all I did. And Dusty Rhodes was always very complementary and that period of my career was constant fun. And then, Bad News Barrett. I think Bad News Barrett was just having a laugh every single night. And going out there, my aim when I went out there wasn’t to entertain the crowd who were in attendance.
My aim was to entertain my friends watching back home who I used to go out to the pubs with in England and Wales because I knew if I made them laugh, that level of humor would crossover to everyone else, so I would just go out there and put on this ridiculous routine. I knew it was working when I’d walk around the corridor and the locker rooms and stuff and I just within two or three weeks of debuting that character, I’d hear people doing my catchphrase.
And I’d walk passed Triple H and he’d say the catchphrase. Then, Stephanie [McMahon] would say it. And then, Vince [McMahon] would be saying it. I was like, ‘okay, this is working, clearly, at this point.’ So yeah, it was a lot of fun.”
On thinking about leaving WWE after the ‘Bad News Barrett’ gimmick was dropped:
“It’s another one of those moments that kind of led me to make the decision to move on because I felt there was a time where I had some momentum there and it wasn’t my decision to stop doing that character. It was somebody else’s decision. And, first of all, I was Bad News Barrett saying the catchphrase and then, I wasn’t allowed to say the catchphrase anymore. So I was still Bad News Barrett coming out there with a Bad News Barrett t-shirt, but I wasn’t allowed to say the catchphrase anymore, so I was like, ‘okay, it doesn’t really work if I can’t say the catchphrase anymore and people are cheering it and you want me to be a heel, then I’m not really Bad News Barrett. I’m just a guy in a t-shirt that says Bad News Barrett and not giving out the bad news.’
The next thing you know, I was King Of The Ring, which was, ‘oh, we’re going to drop Bad News Barrett,’ which was over for this and this could be a great vehicle now to kind of push me towards that main event as a heel,’ right?” Barrett explained, “but within two weeks, I was losing to, I think Sin Cara, I lost to within two weeks of winning the King Of The Ring. And I was losing to R-Truth and I was like, ‘this isn’t the direction that this should be using.’
No disrespect to those two guys, they are both really talented guys, but at that moment in time, neither of them were high enough on the card for me to be kind of use this to be climbing up in any way and certainly not when I’m losing to them. And it was, for me, that was, they trashed something that was over and gave me something that is not going to get over. And even down to Vince insisting that I had to wear the cape and the crown every night, which, for me, may have worked in the 80s, but it didn’t work in this era. And I was trying to slowly walk out and forget the crown and I’d be called up to gorilla [position] afterwards and ‘Vince wants you to wear the crown every night’ and stuff like that.
So that was another thing. It was just disappointment. Like, I got myself to a position where we could springboard forward and again it was, ‘no, we’re going to go in a different direction.’ So I guess it got to the point where I felt in my head anyway at that time that it doesn’t matter what I’d come up with or what I’d do. I’m destined to be put back down in this position that I’m not enjoy or not wanting to be in, so yeah, disappointment for sure and it just added weight to the idea that I need to move on and do something else.”
