Jericho welcomes former WWE Superstar, Wade Barrett to the show.

Jericho asks Barrett about his decision to leave WWE a couple of years ago. Jericho mentions that he burned out in 2005 and had to step away from the wrestling business for 2 and a half years, and Barrett says that he had read Jericho’s books and felt exactly the same way. He was so tired and beat up and everything started to annoy him. He was never on the same page as the creative team and even when he pleaded with creative or management to change things it was like he was beating his head against a brick wall.

He points out that working for WWE is not the kind of job where you can take a vacation or a break. Even when you’re home you only get to sleep in your own bed for one night and you’re so busy trying to catch up on chores and sleep that it still feels like work. The WWE lifestyle is non-stop and it took him a good 6 months to re-normalize and live a normal life after he left the company.

Advertising
Advertising

Barrett felt like he was always one of the next guys in line in terms of receiving a main event push in WWE for a while, but his potential place was filled by guys like The Miz, Del Rio and Sheamus. He adds that the main event guys like Cena and Lesnar are always at the top, but he felt like he was often close to joining that next group. Unfortunately, he just couldn’t get there.

Barrett informs that he would try to better his physique or put in more time to earn his was into a top position, but he seemed to be moving backwards on the card. In 2015 and 2016 he felt as if he was being used basically as an enhancement talent. He was often used in the ‘filler segments’ on RAW and would lose in 2 or 3 minutes without any storylines.

He says that he arrived at a Smackdown show one day and had a huge blow up with Talent Relations. He had been arguing back and forth with talent relations for a while and on this day it reached it’s climax. He wasn’t on the show anyways so he grabbed his bags and left the building. As he was driving away from the building he met Jericho who was driving into the building. Jericho flipped him off jokingly, not knowing about what had transpired in the building, and that was Barrett’s big goodbye to WWE.

Jericho asks Barrett what the point of the League of Nations was. Barrett thinks the purpose of that group was to put some credible guys with Sheamus in order to get him some heat. Sheamus was pretty cold at the time and had just won the MITB briefcase, so the company wanted to build him up before he cashed in. However, Barrett doesn’t think it worked that well since they were booked to lose every week.

He recalls one night when the League of Nations faced Roman Reigns in a 4 on 1 Handicap match and Reigns won. He doesn’t think that helped Reigns at all, noting that strong babyface booking like that is counter-productive at times.

Barrett informs that he was so burned out towards the end of his run there that he didn’t even bother trying to make anything better when he received scripts. During that period of time he didn’t have any arguments with creative or management because he was just going with the flow and giving them what they wanted. Jericho points out that when you lose that fire it’s time to move on. Barrett informs that he had no plan when he left WWE, he just knew that he needed to get away.

Barrett mentions that he landed the lead role in a film called “Vengeance”, in which he did all his own stunts. He points out that working as a professional actor is different than working in WWE because nothing’s live. Sometimes they do 15 takes of each scene from multiple angles, and that can be annoying when he was accustomed to live shoots. He also says it took him a while to adjust to filming fight scenes because he was accustomed to actually laying in punches and kicks, but in the movie business you don’t actually land strikes.

Jericho recalls a Highlight Reel segment featuring him, Barrett, The Miz and Brad Maddox from a few years ago. It wasn’t a great segment by any means, but Michael Cole called it the worst segment in RAW history after being instructed to say so by Vince McMahon. Jericho was furious with this and actually grabbed Cole and called him out for it. He got to the backstage area and people with livid at him for roughing up Cole, but McMahon later agreed that he might have overreacted by calling it the worst segment of all time.

Barrett is very happy for his old friend, Drew McIntyre. He thinks McIntyre is going to be very successful in his second run with the company. He notes that the entire locker room was blown away by McIntyre’s initial release, and most people were confused as to why the company would release someone with his size and ability. Barrett adds that McIntyre’s promos may have needed work, but he addressed that during his indie run and now he’s one of the best in WWE.

Barrett informs that he had a lot of fun with the Bad News Barrett character, and he’s proud of what he did with that gimmick. Eventually that gimmick was dropped when he won King of the Ring, and creative told him that this win could be very beneficial for him. Unfortunately, within a couple of weeks he was losing to guys like Sin Cara and R-Truth and he knew this was a problem.

That sums up today’s episode of Talk is Jericho. You can listen to the show yourself anytime here, and I’ll catch ya next week for another recap!

Steve Carrier

Steve is the Founder of RingsideNews. He has been writing about professional wrestling since 1996. He first got into website development at the time and has been focusing on bringing his readers the best professional wrestling news at it's highest quality.

Disqus Comments Loading...