8 Radical Ideas For WWE To Save Wade Barrett
From despair to where?
How do you put a broken superstar back together again? Thats a question that WWE had better learn how to answer, as their shortsighted, short term booking strategies leave so many of the ultra-talented performers on their roster damaged in the eyes of their fans. King Wade Bad News Barrett is a perfect case in point. The acclaimed Nexus storyline, universally agreed to have been torpedoed early by John Cena, was originally designed to do two things: introduce the cast of that season of NXT to the fans as actual WWE superstars, and get their leader Wade Barrett over. A potentially main event level star, introduced in a sensational angle in 2010... then, over the next five years, painstakingly booked into a hole in the ground. The real life Stu Bennett has an enormous upside as a WWE superstar: he's great on the mic, charismatic in a gruffly beaming, no nonsense kind of way, like a cheerfully unstable uncle at Christmas. He's got good size and athletic ability, really great timing and cardio, and he's technically proficient while gearing his moveset towards the brawling end of the spectrum: WWEs favourite combination. And he can brawl... he rivals Sheamus for being able to give and take a good stiff pounding, a sentence that now that I look at it doesnt mean quite what I intended it to. Yet for the first three years of his run on the main roster, Barrett was trapped in this weird limbo state: not really pushed, but kept hovering at the top end of the midcard. Its as if the office knew that they should be doing something with him but had no idea what, and kept him hanging around just in case- like a spare key that youre sure opens something really important, if only you could remember what it was. Its the last two years that have put the tin lid on it, though. Barrett got properly over for the first time with the Bad News gimmick against the plans of WWE management, who promptly took it away from him. Ever since then, its been a litany of humiliating losses buttressed by meaningless awards, like a starved dog given the leftovers at Thanksgiving. So how do you put a broken superstar back together again? How do you rebuild a wrestler so kayfabe worthless that literally no one ever expects him to win - a man who jobs to the jobbers? Heres how.