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Every WWE superstar dreams of making it big in the WWE, and to make a huge impact during their debut. Although you have the likes of Jericho, Carlito and Santino Marella who made memorable debuts on the main roster, one group turned the entire wrestling industry upside down, when they attacked and decimated everyone in sight, including the face of the WWE, John Cena. Two superstars in particular from Nexus have had great careers so far in the WWE, and one of them has been the former WWE Intercontinental champion, “Bad News” Barrett.
I had the pleasure of catching up with Barrett when he recently came down to India for a promotional tour. We discussed about a wide range of topics, from how the idea of Nexus came up to what he thought about the current NXT champion, Adrian Neville. Below is an excerpt from the interview.
What was the first thing that made you realize you were in India? Any special instance that stands out from your trip so far? And how has the experience been?
BNB: The first thing that really stood out when I landed in India was the kind of outfits that people wear here when they’re working; like in the US and the UK way I’m used to where they wear jeans and T – Shirt and shorts or something like that. But here they wear extravagant outfits with a lot of gold on, with crazy hats and things like that. So I noticed that right after I stepped out of the plane. I had seen people in very wild outfits, which I thought was cool. And in terms of the experience out here, it’s been great to me. So many Indian fans who are so obsessive about the WWE and I’m talking about the mall appearances and bars, and things like that. Just to know that there are so many crazy fans out here in India who love WWE has been a really cool experience, and that really stood out to me.
Some of the greatest wrestlers are from the United Kingdom, such as the Dynamite Kid, Davey Boy Smith and William Regal. You’re a multiple time Intercontinental champion yourself; how does it feel to have achieved so much in such short period of time?
BNB: It feels great. The three people you just mentioned, they’re huge idols of mine. Davey Boy Smith especially being one of the main reasons I probably became a wrestler. As a kid, I used to watch all of his matches and have posters of him on my wall and I think both William Regal and Davey Boy Smith held the Intercontinental championship at some point in their careers. So I kind of followed in their footsteps. It’s been great, and the only one thing we’re really missing is English guys; we’ve never had a WWE World Heavyweight champion. So hopefully, I’m the guy who’s going to change that one day. That’s my aim anyway.
You won the inaugural season of NXT, and the way Nexus debuted on RAW shook the entire wrestling industry. How did the idea come about, and when were you told about the “RAW takeover”?
BNB: That was an idea that came from Vince McMahon himself. He’s the creative genius behind 90% of what you see on WWE TV, and that was a vision he had. He wanted to get a load of new characters on TV as quick as he could, so he came up with that idea, and basically he gave us free reign to do whatever we wanted at the end of RAW when we debuted. So, 8 of us just walked down to the ring and caused as much carnage as we could, we tore everything up. We smashed up the ring, we ripped the ropes down, we tore up the mats and beat up the commentators, and attacked anybody we could.
I think to give us something especially at that point which was never been seen before, and it was very shocking. I think if you look at the reactions of the people in the crowd, they were genuinely disturbed by what they had seen. So, it’s almost impossible in this day and age to get that kind of reaction because the audiences have seen everything. Wrestling is so exposed; we do about 8 or 9 hours of TV of brand new content, plus you can see online and on the WWE Network, on DVDs; it’s really hard to get something new, and it felt great that we were able to do that and give the crowd that kind of reaction.
When did Vince McMahon tell you that this was going to happen?
BNB: He gave us permission to go out and do whatever we wanted probably about 2 hours before the show went live. So we were just there that day. We didn’t know what we were doing there. I won NXT season 1 the week before, so I knew I was going to be doing something on the show, but I didn’t know what. It was kept very top secret, the roster didn’t know what was going on. In fact, few of the guys on the roster felt like they should run down to the ring and attack us and stuff because of what we were doing. They didn’t know we got the permission to do it, they thought we were doing just whatever we wanted to do. So, yeah, it was a pretty interesting day.
Talking about British superstars, there’s also one other person who is currently the NXT champion, Adrian Neville. He has also earned high praises in the independent circuit. What are your thoughts about him?
BNB: I think Adrian Neville’s incredible. I always seem to get on very well with the British guys in the WWE because of the fact that we got a lot in common. We can talk about what kind of music we grew up listening to and the kind of TV shows, and obviously football is massive in the UK. Adrian Neville is a massive Newcastle United fan, so we talk a lot about football. But in terms of his abilities, he is incredible. I think he might be the greatest acrobat in the history of pro wrestling, that I’ve ever seen anyway. He’s got some amazing aerial abilities; I think he’s done a great job in NXT in terms of adapting his abilities to more WWE style, and I think they’re ready to pull the trigger on him very soon. I think in the next few months, you’re going to see him on WWE TV, and I think he’s going to be a massive success, which is great for the fans over in the UK, as well as rest of the world.
Also, with the millions of WWE fans in India, WWE hasn’t really stepped on the gas, to tap the potential of the market yet. Will it change in the next few years? And how does a global conglomerate like the WWE view India as a potential market?
BNB: I think any global company is going to view India as a massive market by the virtue of the fact that there are 1.2 billion people here. It’s a massive market, there’s a huge amount of money here, and there are a lot of potential fans out here. You’re right, we really haven’t stepped on the gas enough in India, but there are plans for that to change. We realize how valuable this is from an economic point of view, and as us wrestlers do when we get the opportunity to go to places like this and see how crazy the fans are, and how much they love WWE and how much they want to absorb everything WWE has to offer, it makes us want to come out here and perform. And I think fingers crossed, at some point in the future we have a tour coming up, we have some ideas about how we can get here some point in the future. So us in the locker room, we want to get out here, and the guys in the board room also want to get out here, and I think in the next few years, we’re going to grow more and more here in India.
Next couple of years, it’s going to be massive in India, and we’re going to be here as much as we can.
To listen to the complete audio, click here.
