10 Huge Pops WWE Fans Gave To Outsiders
10. Wayne Rooney
Playing the football card in the UK is difficult. WWE is an American company and therefore not entirely privy to the bipartisan nature of the sport in British cities, despite the fairly rudimentary nature of the research required to become so. You can’t just turn up in Manchester, slag off Man Utd, and expect to get heel heat. Chances are at least half the audience is going to be blue. Mind, this is Manchester: there’s a good chance that 100% of the audience will also be there to slag off Man Utd.
That being said, Bad News Barrett gave a masterful heel display when RAW came to Manchester in November 2015. Wayne Rooney was in the front row, and ol’ Wade himself decided to give the Utd star a bit of an earful. The crowd was on both sides, in truth, but Barrett’s decision to make it about Rooney’s family seemed to touch a nerve.
Barrett and Rooney went face to face before Wayne slapped the spit out of the former King’s mouth, eliciting a thrilled reaction from the crowd. Wayne Rooney isn’t exactly England’s most popular footballer, quite the opposite at various points of his career, but Bad News Barrett was able to make him a hero, at least for one day.