When Wade Barrett first led The Nexus to Raw and started feuding with the company's top stars, he wasn't able to hold up his end of the bargain in the ring. The inexperienced grappler wrestled some awful matches against Randy Orton, and while John Cena was able to make things a bit better, Barrett was out of his league - that may be part of why his star dropped so dramatically heading into 2011. It's a shame, because over the course of the next couple of years, "Bad News" improved dramatically. He began harnessing his legitimate background as a bare-knuckle fighter to develop a hard-hitting, intense brawling style that helped him stand out from the rest of the superstars on the roster. The next time he feuded with Randy Orton, the result was a series of physical, and memorable, matches. There aren't many superstars on the current roster who wrestle like Wade Barrett does. WWE would be wise not to let his smash-mouth, yet cerebral, style become limited to archived footage on the WWE Network.
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013
