10 Wrestlers Who Were Stuck In Midcard Purgatory

9. Wade Barrett

Wade Barrett
WWE.com

Speaking of major missed opportunities who left earlier this year after deciding enough was enough, how did WWE fail to capitalise on Wade Barrett? The northern bruiser picked up a number of cruel injuries at inopportune times, but more often than not these came at the hands of opponents as opposed to himself. It seemed unfair for Barrett to be kept down because of any perceptions of being injury prone.

Wade Barrett pretty much arrived on the cusp of the main event way back in 2010, but the cusp was as close as he got. Barrett won five Intercontinental Championships, but each reign was more disappointing than the last, punctuated by non-title losses and other questionable booking moves.

Barrett had the look and size that WWE notoriously loves, but despite picking up big wins over Randy Orton and others the man from Lancashire seemed to move further and further away from winning a world championship as time dragged on. Enough was enough, and in May of this year he was finally released.

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Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.