Wade Barrett was recently on Ring Rust Radio. Here are the
highlights…
On whether the Intercontinental Title is more
meaningful now that the world titles are unified: “I think any time
there’s more focus on a particular title, the better it is for the title holder.
I think with the reduction in the number of titles and now with the combined
World and WWE Championship titles, I think it definitely puts a lot more
emphasis on the Intercontinental Championship. Also, considering the fact that
The Shield have had the U.S title with Dean Ambrose carrying that for a while
and hasn’t been defending it at all. I can’t remember the last time he defended
it. I think about six months or so since he last defended it, so I think that
puts even more emphasis on the intercontinental title as the main secondary
title in WWE. So definitely, I’d like to get my hands on it and pick up that IC
title once again.”
On whether he’d like to see the King of the
Ring return: “Personally, I love tournaments and I think American
sports in general have that sort of playoff format for championships where you
need to beat a team to get to the next round and obviously World Cup Soccer is
set up that way too, so for me tournaments are great. It gives the fans a reason
to be invested in something, it’s not just a series of cold matches, and I think
with each match having something at stake is the key. It drives fans’ interest
in the matches that we’re putting on and it certainly means something when
someone can get to a final with the champion because you have to work pretty
hard to get there. So hopefully that means fans are more invested in it, and I
think it provides some good entertainment. And to what you said about the King
of the Ring, I was a big fan of that when I was younger, so if that comes back,
I’d be very happy about that.”
Barrett on the creation of the
Bad News character: “At the time when I came up with it, I wasn’t
really doing anything too much on the show, I was on the low, cold matches and I
wasn’t really involved in any program or anything, so I felt like I wanted to do
something different. The guy at WWE.com suggested that they use me in some way
on the JBL and Cole show, so I had to think about it and Cody Rhodes came up
with the idea originally where I would just keep giving bad news to everyone in
somewhat of a reflection of my personality in the locker room. Thankfully it
seemed to work in the form we were using it at the time and people responded to
it and we took it from there. In terms of how it will evolve, that’s very
difficult to predict. I wasn’t expecting people to be cheering me at the Hall of
Fame when I came out to give bad news and the response I got later, the kind of
baby face response where people were looking forward to hearing my bad news, it
wasn’t something I anticipated. So, it’s something I’ll just go with the flow
and see how people respond and that really dictates how a character will
evolve.”
