Its utterly bizarre to me, the incredible number of people that are still convinced that the man behind the Wade Barrett/Bad News Barrett/King Barrett character was genuinely a champion bare knuckle boxer in his twenties. Why on earth would fans of professional wrestling take it as read, on this one occasion, that it's not just a work? Theres no information available on this supposed previous life as a legit scrapper except references to it in his media interviews, which are (as usual with WWE interviews) a weird mixture of shoot and work. Those people who inexplicably cling to this bit of backstory as being legit will loudly cite a lack of evidence as evidence of the truth of the matter: after all, the sport is illegal, and so are the tournaments surrounding it, so of course its on the down low. Except that illegal things make it onto the internet all the time. Newspapers, magazines and television run features on bare knuckle boxing. There are interviews available online with some of the more infamous participants in England, like James Gypsy Boy McCrory and Decca The Machine Hedgie. People write books about them. More importantly, the fights are all over YouTube, some with millions of views. This isnt child pornography. Given all that, youre telling me that somehow, old, grainy phone-recorded footage of dodgy BKB fights involving Stuart Bennett hasnt been uploaded to YouTube to make money from Wade Barretts current status as a world-famous WWE Superstar? Then theres the Battle Of Buda story he used to tell. These fights dont take place in stadia or arenas, arent sponsored by big brands and broadcast across international lines on pay-per-view. Yet the supposed purse was twenty thousand pounds, meaning that the organisers of the fight must have made at least as much, if not far more. How? From the charge on the door? How much were these people paying to watch the fight?! Usually, BKB fights in the UK get the winner about £250, and the loser maybe a third of that. How do I know that? Because people talk about it! What about that vicious looking scar? Wasnt that a record of a failed attempt at a mugging when someone tried stabbing him and stealing that twenty grand from him in Budapest? Its funny, but that scar is more or less where a souvenir from surgery on the latissimus dorsi muscle might land. You know - the surgery that kept Stu Bennett out of action for eight months in FCW in 2009, and from which hed only just recovered when he starred in season one of NXT. The mashed nose? People break their noses in pro wrestling all the time: clearly Bennett just didnt get his straightened afterwards. The story is clearly a work: most tellingly, Chris Jericho had Wade Barrett, completely out of character, on the Talk Is Jericho podcast a couple of years ago and asked him all about his life story and how he broke into the business. Despite this, the only reference that either man made to the whole bare knuckle thing was when Jericho gently ribbed him over it in passing. The gimmicked backstory wasnt even worth ten seconds of their conversation.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
