Wade Barrett Says WWE Dropping Bad News Gimmick Helped Lead To His Departure

Wade Barrett recently appeared on Talk is Jericho (transcript via wrestlinginc.com), and spoke about the failed League Of Nations faction, WWE dropping his hilarious Bad News gimmick and more.

On The League Of Nations: “They were doing something with Sheamus at that point.” Barrett recalled, “I think he had the Money In The Bank briefcase and he was pretty cold coming into where he needed to get to the point where he’s cashing it in. Time was kind of running out, I think, so I think the theory was, ‘let’s put steam behind Sheamus by having this legit faction of guys around him who became a more credible threat than he was seen as at the time. Like I said, he wasn’t doing too much on the show and he didn’t have a ton of steam for a cash in or anything like that, so they put us around him, I think, to help him and build a bit of credibility behind him before he had this feud with Roman. And then, ultimately, to make Roman look like he’s conquering these four badasses or whatever it is.”

On WWE Booking Weak Villains: “In terms of the quality of the writing, you’ve not really much of a threat because you’re four guys standing there getting your asses kicked every week and that’s exactly what happened.” Barrett professed, “I think at one point, we had a four-on-one match with Roman and he ended up going over in the match somehow. And we had the Keystone Cops guys running into each other and stuff where, on paper, ‘wow, Roman’s going to look like a real ass kicker if he can take on these four guys,’ but in reality, it’s just so ridiculous. It doesn’t help him at all and sometimes that really strong babyface booking can be counterproductive. And I remember I had something very similar a couple of times when I was the Intercontinental Champion. I remember they had Ezekiel Jackson who they wanted to kind of break out and move him up the card and be a big star. But their way of doing that, when they kind of broke up the Corre faction that we were in just to have him just beat the s–t out of me every single week where I got nothing on him up until the point of two months later, he wins the Intercontinental Championship off me, which, for him, nobody cared! It was to the point where I’d have my ass kicked so much that nobody cared in the end that he was the champ because it was like he wasn’t even conquering a threat. I had something similar with Dean Ambrose too. I worked a program with him and I felt that he got nothing out of that despite the fact that he was kicking my ass every week. I mean, in the end, he didn’t get anything out of it because he wasn’t overcoming a threat or anything like that. It was almost obvious from the beginning that he was in such a league higher than me. And I feel that Roman probably didn’t get much out of the League Of Nations thing either just because we were booked so weakly that when he does conquer us, it’s almost like it’s meaningless.”

On Being mentally Checked Out ByThe Time of The league of Nations: “I’ve blocked a lot of it out. Honestly, I genuinely don’t even remember some of it.” Barrett added, “honestly, that final… especially the final six months, I was mentally so checked out then, like, a lot of it just bypassed me. In the past, I was turn up and try to change something in the booking, or make suggestions to make thing better, or ‘hey, how can I improve this and make it at least a little something out of it?’ By that point, they’d come out and it was my final six months, so I was like, ‘I’ll do it, no problem. I know what you need me to do and I’m not going to fight this anymore. If this is what you want, this is what you’re going to get.’ I’d never had less kind of arguments or tongue-lashings or anything like that from anyone in management or anything during that period because I just went with the flow and gave them exactly what they wanted.”

On Not Having a Post WWE Plan: “It wasn’t a masterplan to go do something else. It wasn’t like I had some great business I was moving on to. I knew that whatever I was doing, I needed to get away from WWE at least for a while, so that’s how it kind of came to a head.” Barrett said, “I didn’t have any plan when I left. It’s just I knew I had to be away from there. And then, when I left, when I had shot the movie in 2014, The Eliminators film, over in the UK, I had kind of gotten to know someone over at Evolutionary Films and when I left WWE, they got in touch with me and sort of suggested a movie that they had, that they had written and thought I’d be perfect for the lead role in it. They sent a script over and that was called Vengeance, so that’s how I kind of transitioned from WWE and that. Still when I left WWE, I was like, ‘will I go to Japan?’ I had some very preliminary chats with people in Japan. TNA got in touch with me and I was like, ‘do you know what? I need a break. Whatever I was going to do, I need a little break from wrestling.’ And this film stuff came up and I was like, ‘do you know what? I had fun doing that kind of stuff in the past. Let’s explore this and see where that goes.”

On WWE Dropping Bad News Barrett: “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,” Barrett continued, “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.”