Bad News Barrett Talks Current Gimmick, “Payback,” and Much More

WWE Intercontinental Champion Bad News Barrett spoke to ThisIsInfamous.com, promoting tomorrow’s “Payback pay-per-view, occurring on June 1. At the event, Barrett will defend his newly won title against none other than Rob Van Dam. Barrett talked about a number of topics, including his new “Bad News” gimmick, his debut with Nexus, becoming Intercontinental Champion again, and many others.

Billy Donnelly of the website talked to Barrett about his time in Nexus, asking him if he was disappointed in how things played out:

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t in a way disappointed. I think we could have gotten a lot more mileage out of it than we did, and I think the interest from the fans and the heat in the angle was thrown away at certain points. However there is a flip side of looking at it, and that’s that you took seven or eight guys that were relative unknowns at that point and got them involved in the main event at SummerSlam and for the most part all the guys are still kind of around here or there and have had some very successful careers and have continued to grow and develop within WWE. So there’s really two ways of looking at it. The angle itself should have been a lot bigger than it ended up being, but the flip side is that you look at a lot of people who debut in WWE and they don’t get a huge start that helps move onto a bigger and better career further down the line. So in some ways I feel lucky to have been involved in it.”

He also asked Barrett about the debut of Nexus, and how much leeway the group was given:

“We were given a ton of leeway. We were basically told to go down and cause as much destruction as we could. Obviously we weren’t allowed to get physical with fans, but one thing that was off limits was the camera guys. They wouldn’t let us near the cameras. Because A, they’re very expensive and B, because if we touch the cameras, suddenly no one at home can see what we’re actually doing. Aside from that, we were pretty much given as much leeway as we wanted. We took it as far as we could, I think, and we had a lot of fun there.”

Barrett also spoke about his wide variety of gimmicks since then, and what makes Bad News Barrett better:

“I think there’s two things. I think number one, the way I’ve been involved in storylines and the way I’ve been incorporated into the show has really been a method of highlighting me, certainly my strengths. I think you can look at previous incarnations of what I’ve done and I think some of the positions I was used in on the show maybe weren’t the best vehicle in which to highlight me as a performer. I think that the Barrage stuff I was doing had a lot of potential, especially when we had those really cool vignettes that were airing a couple of years ago when I came back from injury. But unfortunately I wasn’t involved in any serious storylines or any angle on TV that the fans could get their teeth sunk into and very quickly I was used in an enhancement role for the better part of a year and a half. I think in my situation where I wasn’t getting any mic time or getting anything storyline wise that the fans could care about, it was always going to be difficult for me to kind of get any momentum. So definitely since I’ve come back this most recent time with the Bad News Barrett stuff, I think the creative guys have done a great job of highlighting me and allowing me to be a performer and take the spotlight a little. The other thing is, I think me as a performer, I’ve really been enjoying this Bad News Barrett stuff. I get stuck over in the UK with some visa problems at the end of last year and had to be off TV for a little while, and I kind of made the decision when I was out there that when I came back I was going to go out there and start enjoying things a little more. I think I got to a point in my career where I was focusing a little too much on the wrong things. Trying to impress people. Management and people on the creative team and trying to do things that I thought they’d want to see in order to get myself higher up on the card as opposed to going out there and really just entertaining myself and having a good time with it, which is what I started doing with Bad News Barrett. I think fans can really see when a performer is enjoying himself and I really have been since I’ve been Bad News Barrett. I’ve been having the most fun of my entire career. I’ve been wrestling 11 years and I can say that the past… six to eight months when I’ve been on TV and being Bad News Barrett is the most fun I’ve ever had and the most relaxed I’ve been out there. That’s definitely an aspect that’s helped make the character and the storylines work.”

Be sure to read the interview, in its entirety, here.

Editor’s Note

A very good, lengthy read that is worth taking the time to read in full.