Wade Barrett reflects on what he would change if he could go back to the days of the Nexus.
While Wade Barrett never became WWE Champion, the inaugural winner of WWE NXT was thrust into the top of the card in 2010, going from relative unknown to the top heel in WWE for the latter half of the year, competing in pay-per-view main events against John Cena, Randy Orton, Chris Jericho, Edge, Bret Hart and more.
Appearing on the Even Stronger podcast with Kazeem Famuyide, the former WWE Intercontinental Champion looks back on his early days in WWE, admitting that if he could go back with the mind he has today, he would have handled political situations differently because, at the time, he believes he was dealing with situations well beyond his realm of comprehension.
"Well, it's kind of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I'll get it out of the way now. I wish I had the brain I have now on the young body and potential I had back then because I would have done things a little differently. I would have handled certain political situations differently, things that were completely beyond the realm of my comprehension in 2010. I wasn't able to understand how the industry worked behind the scenes," said Barrett. "The other side of that is the positive side where you've got to remember at that point in my career. I'd probably been training to be a wrestler for about seven years at that point. I'd been all over Europe at that point. Obviously, I'd come over to the US and been in the developmental systems in Ohio Valley Wrestling and Florida Championship Wrestling, getting paid very little and making big sacrifices to try and chase this dream.
"So, the really cool thing about the era that you see [in WWE 2K23] this young, fresh-faced Wade Barrett, that was the point where I knew that no matter what happened from there, all my sacrifices had been worth it," he continued. "I'd made it to WWE, I'd made it to the pay-per-views, I'd made it to Raw and SmackDown, I was a focal point of the show in 2010. So, really, it felt like a big weight lifted off my shoulders that I wasn't going to have to go back to the UK with my tail in between my legs, having failed to make it and having to go back to my regular old job and beg them for my job back. I think that would have haunted me for life. So, there was a massive feeling of achievement and relief that I got to that point in 2010, and this is the character you get to play with now on WWE 2K23."
Elsewhere in this interview, the 2015 King of the Ring reveals he has no interest in getting back in the squared circle to take on current Intercontinental Champion Gunther. Read his emphatic "no" to that scenario at this link.
That being said, while a hypothetical match with Gunther is a definitive "no" for Barrett, he isn't completely ruling out a return to the ring. Learn more here.
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