LaBar: WWE never got it right with Barrett
The amount of unfortunate descriptions for the WWE career of Wade Barrett outnumber the positive ones.
Ryan Satin of ProWrestlingSheet.com reported Barrett informed WWE he will be leaving once his contract expires in June. Barrett acknowledged on Twitter the buzz generated by the report writing: “I'll comment further at a more appropriate time, but for now, I'm 100% focused on doing my job for @WWE. See you at #FastLane on Sunday.”
If the report was wrong, then he likely would deny it. I interpret this as Barrett will talk about his future once his contract expires because his future isn't with WWE and he would like to have as pleasant of a work environment as possible until he is gone.
Barrett was labeled as someone WWE saw long-term value in. He began with dominance on the NXT competition to being the leader of the Nexus group that battled on top of the card in 2010 against John Cena and others. He worked with the best and learned from the best.
The summary of WWE's handling of Barrett was placing him in important roles, but not following through for one reason or another. When Nexus broke up, he led a new spinoff, The Corre. Did you forget about them? I bet you wish you had. There also was a bare-knuckle-brawler gimmick that never got passed the point of the entry level win streak of a few weeks.
Through the trial, errors and injuries, we eventually got to see the personality and charisma Barrett has when they stumbled on to the Bad News Barrett gimmick. It originated from the shenanigans backstage used to entertain each other while they travel 300 days a year. Cody Rhodes would make up stories of Barrett being his favorite wrestler growing up, despite Rhodes only being five years younger. The Bad News Barrett persona eventually made its way on WWE television and the rest was history. Well, brief history.
Bad News Barrett was meant to be a heel, and it felt like it was picking up more of a baby-face excitement to see. Run with it. Go with what's working. WWE didn't, and I can only assume it was a strong motivation for the change.
Bad News Barrett was eventually traded in for King Barrett when he won the King of the Ring tournament. Terrible decision. On paper, it's viewed as a push. Win the tournament and walk around like a ridiculous heel everyone likes to hate, proclaiming he's royalty and everyone else is peasants.
But it's redundant and it doesn't provide the boost to a career that it once did. The moment the King of the Ring stopped being an annual pay-per-view, it lost credibility. It got relegated to a cheap tournament to fill time on RAW or SmackDown. It would be used randomly. Some years, it would happen. Other years, it wouldn't, and it wasn't the same time of year. It seemed like someone was tossing a dart to a wall and sometimes it landed on the “KOTR” sticky note.
King Barrett did nothing of importance. Then we got to where we are now: The League of Nations with him Rusev, Sheamus and Alberto Del Rio. Top of the card for a week, Sheamus lost the title and they've since been floundering around with no direction.
A factor in Barrett's WWE run has been reoccurring obstacles preventing him from performing. Elbow injuries, shoulder injures and work visa issues since 2012. This doesn't make things easy for him or WWE. All it does is further highlight missed opportunities when healthy.
WWE still put investment in him by giving him an IC title run again or the crown to be King Barrett, but would squander the investment with the use of him.
More often than not, I side with WWE understanding the complexity of factors in making decision. With many factors, the audience has no way of understanding from outside media scheduling, like filming a movie, to sponsorship requests, to the health of everyone, to a particular guy having political pull and it alters the entire roster plans like dominos. This all happens. But in the case of Barrett, too often it seemed when healthy that his talents weren't used to the fullest.
This was the beauty of Bad News Barrett. Even if he can't wrestle, the character is so entertaining and in many ways versatile on the microphone that he doesn't need to wrestle, but the character stock can be kept alive by still appearing on show.
Barrett has a natural wit and sense of humor. No reason Bad News Barrett couldn't have been a commentator for one of WWE's weekly shows, where they insist on having three-man announce teams. Was six months of Barrett on commentary going to damage the career of Byron Saxton?
Not since Mr. Kennedy can I think of someone who had such promise but never reached it on account of unfortunate factors. Barrett won the Intercontinental title fives times in WWE and none of the title runs are memorable to me for anything other than it seemed he got booked to lose a lot of non-title matches.
Perhaps Barrett has made up his mind to leave due to the frustrations he's felt with injuries. Perhaps it's with frustration of how he's been used. A logical mind would say it's a combination. What's done is done and Barrett appears to be close to done — and that's the ultimate bad news.
Justin LaBar is a Tribune-Review staff writer. He can be reached at jlabar@tribweb.com or via Twitter @JustinLaBar
