Stu Bennett, aka WWE star Wade Barrett, was a recent guest on Talk Is Jericho with Chris Jericho. Bennett talks about the final weeks of his WWE run and what led to his departure, how Jericho (unknowningly) said goodbye to him, and more. You can read a few transcribed highlights below and listen to the full show here.
(Transcription credit to Bill Pritchard for Wrestlezone.com)
You would never see a John Cena or a Brock Lesnar or someone of that ilk—you would never see them in those [filler] spots—those are kind of the daft segments where it’s a rollercoaster ride of a show, and we’ll hit peaks in segment six, which is a crossover, and segment eleven, which is a crossover, and obviously the big close of the show and the opening. Everything in between is like ‘OK, we have this time, we have to fill it. Who can we stick out there? OK, have a babyface go over a heel. Who can we get out there that’s not working? How about Barrett?’ So, when you find yourself in routinely those spots, which for me genuinely I feel like I was in those spots for a year plus with no light at the end of the tunnel.
When I talk about having that dread of waking up on a Monday or a Tuesday going to Smackdown, I knew that I was going to get those. It wasn’t even a case where I had to ask the writers ‘Hey, what have I got today?’ because I already know what I’ve got. Having that hanging over you was killing me. I will contrast that and say the live event shows—the Friday, Saturday, Sunday shows that weren’t televised—I had a bunch of fun on them. I was really enjoying that. Just having this thing hanging over me career-wise, I’m heading downwards here, and that’s never where I wanted to be.
I’ll bring this up to you now, I never mentioned this to you at the time, but my final year, we did Wrestlemania in 2015 in Dallas. We did RAW the next day at the [American Airlines Center] in Dallas, pretty much I got kicked out of the League Of Nations that night. I knew, storyline-wise, I’m pretty much done here. I’m going to pretty much run out the next few weeks on my contract, or whatever it is. So I got kicked out of the League Of Nations, storyline-wise I’m certainly finished there. The next day we had the Smackdown show in Houston, and in that building [the Toyota Center] you go in and drive down that giant ramp. I went into the building that day, and I knew I was tying up loose ends at that point. There was one big issue that I was banging heads with talent relations about for a long time. It kind of came to a head there that day, so we get there about two o’ clock, and around three o’ clock or four o’ clock I have this big blowup with talent relations.
Looking back, it was very silly, but I have this blowup, I get very angry, they get very angry. I’m not on the show anymore. At that point I was like ‘I’m just going to grab my bags and go home’. This is basically me leaving WWE. It was a pretty stressful moment, obviously I was angry, and I went and grabbed my bags and went straight to my car, slammed my bags in the car and started the engine up. I’m driving up that ramp and in my head I’m still angry about the blowup we just had, and all I’m thinking ‘this is it in WWE. I’m finished! This is it here today!’ It was pretty crazy considering I spent the majority of my life thinking about working there and how great it was.
As I’m heading up the ramp, I see the light at the top of the tunnel of outside, I’m thinking as soon as I go over that it’s freedom. There’s a bunch of fans, and I get to the top of the ramp, and just as I’m about to burst out into the light and this whole new world that might be ahead of me, a car pulls across the front of me and stops me in my tracks. I’m like ‘who the f*** is this?’ I look up, and it’s you! You get to the building at four, I just look at you and we just lock eyes, and you flip me the bird, and you just kept driving down the tunnel. And then I just put my foot down and head to the airport. I don’t know what reaction I gave you, I was dumbstruck at the time, but that was my ‘big goodbye’ to WWE. I got flipped off by the guy that brought me in storyline-wise, and [you] sent me off into the sunset.
