Editor’s Note: Thanks to Akhilesh Gannavarapu and our friends at SportsKeeda.com for providing us with his interview with Wade Barrett.
I was fortunate enough catch up with WWE Superstar Wade Barrett, aka Bad News Barrett, and discussed his time on NXT, in the Nexus, and the state of wrestling in the United Kingdom. Barrett also talked about the WWE’s future plans in India.
Below is a full audio recording of the interveiw. We have also included an excerpt from the interview for those who can’t listen.
Upload Music – Embed Audio – Interview with Bad News Barr…
What was the first thing that made you realize you were in India? Any special instance that stands out from your trip so far? And how has the experience been?
Wade Barrett (aka Bad News Barrett): The first thing that really stood out when I landed in India was the kind of outfits that people wear here when they’re working; like in the US and the UK way I’m used to where they wear jeans and T – Shirt and shorts or something like that. But here they were extravagant outfits with a lot of gold on, with crazy hats and things like that. So I noticed that right after I stepped out of the plane. I had seen people in very wild outfits, which I thought was cool. And in terms of the experience out here, it’s been great to me. So many Indian fans who are so obsessive about the WWE and I’m talking about the mall appearances and bars, and things like that. Just to know that there are so many crazy fans out here in India who love WWE has been a really cool experience, and that really stood out to me.
Some of the greatest wrestlers are from the United Kingdom, such as the Dynamite Kid, Davey Boy Smith and William Regal. You’re a multiple time Intercontinental champion yourself; how does it feel to have achieved so much in such short period of time?
BNB: It feels great. The three people you just mentioned, they’re huge idols of mine. Davey Boy Smith especially being one of the main reasons I probably became a wrestler. As a kid, I used to watch all of his matches and have posters of him on my wall and I think both William Regal and Davey Boy Smith held the Intercontinental championship at some point in their careers. So I kind of followed in their footsteps. It’s been great, and the only one thing we’re really missing is English guys; we’ve never had a WWE World Heavyweight champion. So hopefully, I’m the guy who’s going to change that one day. That’s my aim anyway.
You won the inaugural season of NXT, and the way Nexus debuted on RAW shook the entire wrestling industry. How did the idea come about, and when were you told about the “RAW takeover”?
BNB: That was an idea that came from Vince McMahon himself. He’s the creative genius behind 90% of what you see on WWE TV, and that was a vision he had. He wanted to get a load of new characters on TV as quick as he could, so he came up with that idea, and basically he gave us free reign to do whatever we wanted at the end of RAW when we debuted. So, 8 of us just walked down to the ring and caused as much carnage as we could, we tore everything up. We smashed up the ring, we ripped the ropes down, we tore up the mats and beat up the commentators, and attacked anybody we could.
I think to give us something especially at that point which was never been seen before, and it was very shocking. I think if you look at the reactions of the people in the crowd, they were genuinely disturbed by what they had seen. So, it’s almost impossible in this day and age to get that kind of reaction because the audiences have seen everything. Wrestling is so exposed; we do about 8 or 9 hours of TV of brand new content, plus you can see online and on the WWE Network, on DVDs; it’s really hard to get something new, and it felt great that we were able to do that and give the crowd that kind of reaction.
When did Vince McMahon tell you that this was going to happen?
BNB: He gave us permission to go out and do whatever we wanted probably about 2 hours before the show went live. So we were just there that day. We didn’t know what we were doing there. I won NXT season 1 the week before, so I knew I was going to be doing something on the show, but I didn’t know what. It was kept very top secret, the roster didn’t know what was going on. In fact, few of the guys on the roster felt like they should run down to the ring and attack us and stuff because of what we were doing. They didn’t know we got the permission to do it, they thought we were doing just whatever we wanted to do. So, yeah, it was a pretty interesting day.
How was it for you as a superstar to be involved with the biggest name in the business today, John Cena, right after debuting on the main roster?
BNB: That was a pretty intense period in my life, to go from being pretty much an unknown wrestler, which I had been for 6 years at that point since I’ve started wrestling to suddenly get the opportunity to go out there and be a main event level character, and be the guy that’s opening up every RAW on the microphone and closing every RAW, wrestling all the top stars and beating up John Cena, which is a huge jump for me to go from that unknown around the world; I wasn’t recognized to immediately being one of the most important guys on the show. So it was a pretty intense period in my life, but I also loved every second of it. It was what essentially I was aiming to do, what I had sacrificed for, for over 6 – 7 years in my career to get to that point. So, to get that payoff, it felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders; so I didn’t really feel the pressure much. I was just enjoying the reactions we were getting and I knew it was working. Everything we did was working perfectly, so that felt good.
Regarding the way how the whole angle played out, do you think Nexus could’ve been booked better towards the end of the feud?
BNB: Yeah, 100%. I think there was definitely more life left in Nexus at the time. If I had been in charge, I wouldn’t have ended it like it ended. But then again, we got great opportunities for young superstars to come into the WWE, make a huge impact and then 4 or 5 years down the line, most of us are still around, and most of us are still making a very good living in the WWE, and are involved in great angles. So I don’t really look at it in a negative way; I think we were very fortunate to get that opportunity, and I’m also very grateful for the fact that Nexus came along when it did. I wish it could’ve gone a bit longer, but I think there’s always that appetite left for people where they want to see some more of Nexus. They know it didn’t end the way it should’ve ended, and I think there’s always a potential in the future where we could bring it back. So we’ll have to see how that goes.
The wrestling fans around the world have been behind you for a long time now, and just when it looked like you’d be pushed into the main event scene, you unfortunately got injured twice. How tough has it been to sit on the side lines and watch the product?
BNB: It’s always tough when you get injured. I think there’s been a bit of misinformation that’s been put about, about my injury in 2012. I’ve heard that said regularly that I was just about to be put into the main event scene, that’s nice to be correct, and I don’t know where that came from. You look at my career, you look at when I got injured in 2012, I really wasn’t doing very much on the show. I was kind of in very much a background role, so where this story came from, I don’t think it’s actually true. I think that’s a bit of misinformation; I think my more recent role when I got injured, I think I had a better chance of jumping into the main event cause I was on a good run as Bad News Barrett. I had the Intercontinental championship, I was getting a lot of momentum at that time, but either way regardless of my standing in the company at the time when I got injured, it’s never a good thing to get injured. I was hurt, and it’s not a fun thing to do, to have to step away from your career and take a step back, and watch the rest of the show go on without you, which is what I’m actually doing at the moment.
But possibly with that being said, when you get injured, other opportunities come up. In 2012, I ended up getting involved in a WWE studios’ movie “Dead Man Down”, so that was a great experience. This time, I’ve had the opportunity, for example, to come down to India and meet the fans out here, which I wouldn’t have had, had I not been injured, because I’d been out wrestling across the US. So, there are positives too, to get injuries, but like I said, I want to get back as soon as I can, and wrestle in front of the WWE Universe.
You’ve named people like John Cena and the rest of the roster, but who has been your favorite opponent to work with?
BNB: My favorite opponent to work with.. I’d say there are two to choose between, and it’s because I’ve probably wrestled them more than anybody else, and that would be Kofi Kingston and Sheamus. They’re two completely different wrestlers. Kofi is obviously a high – flying, technical kind of guy, and Sheamus is very smash mouth and last time there were a lot of bruises and black eyes and things like that. So two completely different kind of wrestlers; I always seem to have good chemistry with them, and I don’t think I’ve had a bad match with either of those two, despite the fact that we’d wrestled hundreds of times. So I love wrestling those two, and then just before I got injured, I had a couple of matches with Dolph Ziggler. He’s a guy I have a lot of respect for, and I’ve known Dolph for 6 or 7 years and up until probably 3 months ago, we’ve never had a match before. So to get in with him and we clicked instantly; he’s another one that I’m hoping that when I get back, I get to do stuff with him because he’s currently got my Intercontinental championship I got stripped off. So fingers crossed, when I get back I can go straight for him, and try and win that back, and see what we can do together.
Talking about British superstars, there’s also one other person who is currently the NXT champion, Adrian Neville. He has also earned high praises in the independent circuit. What are your thoughts about him?
BNB: I think Adrian Neville’s incredible. I always seem to get on very well with the British guys in the WWE because of the fact that we got a lot in common. We can talk about what kind of music we grew up listening to and the kind of TV shows, and obviously football is massive in the UK. Adrian Neville is a massive Newcastle United fan, so we talk a lot about football. But in terms of his abilities, he is incredible. I think he might be the greatest acrobat in the history of pro wrestling, that I’ve ever seen anyway. He’s got some amazing aerial abilities; I think he’s done a great job in NXT in terms of adapting his abilities to more WWE style, and I think they’re ready to pull the trigger on him very soon. I think in the next few months, you’re going to see him on WWE TV, and I think he’s going to be a massive success, which is great for the fans over in the UK, as well as rest of the world.
Also, with the millions of WWE fans in India, WWE hasn’t really stepped on the gas, to tap the potential of the market yet. Will it change in the next few years? And how does a global conglomerate like the WWE view India as a potential market?
BNB: I think any global company is going to view India as a massive market by the virtue of the fact that there are 1.2 billion people here. It’s a massive market, there’s a huge amount of money here, and there are a lot of potential fans out here. You’re right, we really haven’t stepped on the gas enough in India, but there are plans for that to change. We realize how valuable this is from an economic point of view, and as us wrestlers do when we get the opportunity to go to places like this and see how crazy the fans are, and how much they love WWE and how much they want to absorb everything WWE has to offer, it makes us want to come out here and perform. And I think fingers crossed, at some point in the future we have a tour coming up, we have some ideas about how we can get here some point in the future. So us in the locker room, we want to get out here, and the guys in the board room also want to get out here, and I think in the next few years, we’re going to grow more and more here in India.
Next couple of years, it’s going to be massive in India, and we’re going to be here as much as we can.
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