Wade Barrett on Getting Slapped by Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney on Raw

– Metro UK recently interviewed former WWE Superstar and current NXT broadcaster Wade Barrett, who discussed the segment where he was slapped by Manchester United captain Wayne Rooney on Raw back in 2015. Below are some highlights.

Wade Barrett on being slapped by Wayne Rooney: “That came about because I’m a Preston North End fan, and we’d drawn against Manchester United in the FA Cup that year. Very exciting for PNE fans, it doesn’t happen very often that you get to play Manchester United, obviously. I was thrilled! I watched the game, PNE did amazing well. I think we were winning at one point, then Man United pulled one back. There’s 10 minutes to go, PNE looked like they were going to get a draw against the mighty Manchester United! And then there was a penalty which Wayne Rooney literally dived for. That’s not a biased opinion, you can go back and check it – it is a blatant dive.”

Barrett on how he started tweeting Wayne Rooney: “At this point, I’m heartbroken. I immediately in my anger, tweet Wayne Rooney accusing him of diving, threatening to give him a Bullhammer. Then I put my phone down, I move on, calm down, forget about it. He ends up replying, this goes into a kinda jokey back and forth where we’re going to have a WrestleMania match, but then obviously it all dies away and nothing happens.”

On how this led to the on-air segment with Rooney at a UK TV taping: “Some time passed, and Wayne wanted to visit WWE when the company rolled into Manchester for their annual UK TV taping, with one of his son’s being a massive fan. I start suggesting [something] to the guys in the management team. He wanted to come backstage with his kid, and meet Triple H and a few others. They brought me into the room too, we had a quick chat and suggested this idea to him. He was down for it, his kid was really excited about it. We did what we did – had a little jaw-jack, I talked a little smack like I tend to do, and he slapped me! That was it, it was a lot of fun. There’s something hilarious about two boys from the north of England getting into it in this giant American company that is WWE. A lot of fun, loved every second of that – great guy too!”