“I just hit my two-year anniversary, just signed a two-year extension to my contract actually, my contract was up,” Barrett told WWE on BT Sport. “Yeah, I’ve been two years so very happy, I think August 2020 is when I came back (and) last week agreed to a new deal, so very, very happy to be staying around with WWE and continuing in my role with NXT. Thrilled to be in that environment, loving it.”
Now, for fans and Barrett's co-workers alike, this news was met with well wishes and “at a boy's.”
The sentiment was also shared by Paul “Triple H” Levesque, who retweeted Michaels' comments and added his own, saying, “proud to have Wade Barrett on our broadcasting team and looking forward to many more years of working together!”
All in all, nice stuff, right? After leaving WWE in 2016 to focus on opportunities outside of the ring, Barrett returned to the company that made him an international star to shepherd along the next generation of wrestlers and wrestling fans like the commentators who helped to make his early matches exciting. His career has come full circle, and the future is looking bright for the criminally underappreciated British wrestler who never quite got the proper shake he deserved in WWE.
The irony in it all? Despite being arguably one of the most important figures in NXT history, he only ever had 17 matches on the black and gold brand, and they aren't exactly remembered as all-time great contests. If it wasn't for NXT, Barrett might have never been a WWE Superstar, but because of his time in NXT, his ceiling was limited as a result too.
🚨 TWO MORE YEARS OF @StuBennett 🚨
"Last week I agreed a new deal, I'm very happy to be staying around with WWE and in my role in #WWENXT" pic.twitter.com/bLOO4u7Ftu
— WWE on BT Sport (@btsportwwe) August 26, 2022
Recalling Wade Barrett's complicated history in NXT.
When the man known to the WWE Universe as Wade Barrett signed a developmental deal with WWE, he wasn't assigned to NXT to begin his in-ring career. He likely would have been if it was an option, as the company was clearly high on him, but instead, he began his run in Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) from 2006-08 and then moved over to Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW) where he worked from 2008-10. From there, Barrett landed in NXT, but the NXT of 2010 was a far different pace than the NXT of 2020, as it resembled more of a reality TV game show designed to “find” the next great WWE Superstar than a developmental wrestling brand.
Competing alongside the likes of David Otunga, Justin Gabriel, Heath Slater, Darren Young, Skip Sheffield, Daniel Bryan, and Michael Tarver, with pros like Chris Jericho, R-Truth, Matt Hardy, Christian, CM Punk, William Regal, The Miz, and Carlito serving as their “Pro,” Barrett ultimately won the show and was tabbed for stardom, but instead, spent his time working in NXT and the occasional match on either RAW or SmackDown with no real push to speak of.
No, that wouldn't come until Barrett was revealed as the leader of The Nexus, a group comprised of the members of NXT Season 1 – minus Daniel Bryan – who were fed up with how they were being treated and wanted to work together to change WWE from the inside. The team worked under Barrett's rule from June of 2010 through January of 2011 and almost made a huge splash when they had a Team Nexus versus Team WWE match at SummerSlam 2010 that was designed to put Barrett over, but according to Chris Jericho and Edge on the former's Talk is Jericho podcast, “The Champ” nixed the idea and buried the group to the point where even CM Punk couldn't keep them alive as a second leader. Read what they had to say via a transcription from Cageside Seats below.
Jericho: It was WWE Team vs. Team Nexus…and the finish boiled down to you [Edge] and me [Jericho] were in there, but it was Cena against a couple of them. John wanted to do things a certain way and we told him ‘you're wrong'. Remember that? And he did it anyways, and it sucked. And then afterwards he came over to us and said ‘I should have listened to you, but I wasn't seeing it that way. And sometimes you just don't see it that way, you know?
Edge: It's one of those things…where he was adamant about what he wanted to do. And I remember, I was like, ‘fine, I'm out of the match by that point'.
Jericho: [Laughes] Exactly. He wanted to get DDT'd on the floor by Barrett, then kick out and beat them both. And you and I were like, ‘that's the dumbest thing. That's just throwing it away for no reason'.
Edge: They should have gone over because they were so hot.
Jericho: We were fighting for Barrett to go over. And, in all fairness, where's Wade Barrett now? They should have listened to us.
Overly generalized? Eh, maybe a little bit, but even a stint as the King of the Ring winner never quite took the stink off of Barrett after losing that match and losing the hype surrounding the Nexus in WWE. What could have been an all-time great idea and a very good faction turned into a running joke and the subject of about a dozen video essays on YouTube, including this great one from Wrestling With Wregret.
And yet, despite having every right to be angry, when WWE reached out about Barrett returning as a commentator, the then 40-year-old accepted the offer and has been killing it on NXT commentary ever since. And hey, as he pointed out to WWE on BT Sport, Barrett can still go and hasn't ruled out a return to the ring at some point down the line.
“Im not chasing anything. Sometimes guys in meetings do start floating out because they secretly really want to get back in the ring. I love my gig in NXT, I love commentating. It’s the happiest I’ve ever been, so I don’t have some strange itch I’m desperately trying to scratch. But with that being said, I don’t think you ever really retire when you’re a wrestler, so if the right opportunity presents itself at the right time then yeah, you might see me back in the ring at some point.”
Goodness, could WWE see a NEXUS 2.0? I mean, probably not, but hey, it's a whole new world under Triple H, so you can never really say definitively one way or another.
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