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What's the story?
Wade Barrett is a former five-time Intercontinental Champion and King of the Ring winner but he made the decision to walk away from WWE back in 2016 and has only recently opened up about the reasons why.
In case you didn't know...
Barrett won the first season of NXT back in 2010 back when NXT was still seen as a reality show, he then went on to be the leader of The Nexus on the main roster before he was pushed into bigger storylines.
Barrett won the King of the Ring tournament back in 2015 which was where he became known as King Barrett. Throughout his career, Barrett was known as Wade Barrett, Bad News Barrett and then King Barrett.
The heart of the matter
Barrett negotiated an early release from his contract in the summer of 2016 and then took a hiatus from the wrestling business so that he could focus on his acting career. Most recently he has been seen as part of What Culture Pro Wrestling and World of Sport in the UK.
Barrett recently appeared as a guest on the NotSam Wrestling podcast with Sam Roberts, where he opened up about the reasons for his early departure.
"I was miserable for a long time for the last few years I was in WWE," Barrett said via WrestlingInc. "I have no beef or hate for them, but it was just how I was feeling at the time. Once upon a time if you go back to the early 2000s all the way to 2014 all I cared about in life was being a wrestler, going on the road, performing in front of crowds, getting big, climbing the ladder. But then at some point around 2015 it took a giant U-turn and thought to myself, 'wait a minute? What am I doing here? This isn't the direction that I want.'"
Barrett also revealed that WWE turned down a number of projects for him during his time contracted to the company and this was one of the reasons why he decided it was time to take a break.
"While I was working for the WWE in 2013 and 2014, TV deals had come to me, movie deals had come to me, sponsorship deals had come to me and they were all turned down by WWE because they would involve me being taken away from their shows. Their steam train is running all over the world and I would have to step out of that steam train and go film for four weeks, or go shoot a film for two weeks or even two days to go film a series of commercials or something like that. But they couldn't afford to take me away from that time so I knew that if I wanted to go and do something else, the only way for me to do that is to first step away from WWE and figure out how I make contacts and how do I start speaking to people in the film world and finding agents and that sort of thing. So one had to come first, and that was to come first to get the curtain off of WWE."
What's next?
Barrett has recently teased a return to the company, but right now he is working as part of ITV's World of Sport show in the UK alongside the likes of Grado, Crater, and Will Ospreay.
Would you like to see Wade Barrett make his return to WWE? Have your say in the comments section below...
