Former WWE star Wade Barrett (Stu Bennett) did an interview comicbookmovie.com and talked about possibly making a comeback in wrestling.
Cody Rhodes recently said on Twitter that he believes you’ll be a future world champion, so what are your thoughts on that, and is All Elite Wrestling a company you’d like to be part of?
Part of my issue is that I’m close to 40 now. I’m 40 in two months, so the prospect of going back and working a full-time professional wrestling schedule isn’t particularly high on my agenda at the moment. That might change. It was very kind of Cody to say that, I’m still very good friends with Cody. We’ve been tight for ten plus years, and he’s done an amazing job with AEW. I am really excited about the explosion in opportunities in the professional wrestling world. I work for NWA currently as a commentator, and there’s Ring of Honor which a friend of mine Marty Scurll is running the moment, obviously IMPACT has done some great stuff recently and grown from the ashes of where they were years ago, and then there’s all the Japanese stuff, and there’s some good stuff going on in the UK too. The fact is, there’s a tonne of opportunities out there now for professional wrestlers which, when I was coming through, weren’t really there. The only game in town realistically was WWE, and it was very, very difficult to see yourself working anywhere outside of that. I think the digital revolution and the opportunity for smaller brands to get big platforms now is fantastic for professional wrestlers and professional wrestling in general.
One final wrestling question : would you say a WWE return is off the cards for you, especially after they so badly dropped the ball with Bad News Barrett, a gimmick I would say should have ended with you becoming WWE Champion?
When I left there, I was of the opinion that I was done with working there. I was pretty angry with a couple of people from when I was working there and when I left, a couple of people in management. I think time is a great healer, shall we say, and I certainly don’t have much anger left in me in regards to that now. Similarly, I don’t feel like I have an automatic affiliation with the company itself or the people who work there. It’s not like I have any ingrained loyalty where I have to jump the second they call me, for example. If there were to be an offer, I would approach it as a normal business decision if it was an offer from AEW or Ring or Honor or New Japan, or anything like that. It’s simply a business decision: is it worth it, do I like the offer, do I like the pitch, do I believe what I’m being pitched is actually going to happen? That’s another big one. I would approach anything that came my way, the same I would from any other company to be honest with you.
