#bullhammer tour

[sortofgetit]

Bullhammer Tour - Cork

For my fellow Wade Barrett/Stu Bennett fans here���s a few of my observations & recollections from the first night of his ‘Evening With’ Bullhammer Tour.

A lot of what he said wasn’t really any massive surprise, either in terms of stories that have been heard in interviews or in the sense that nowadays the fans have a reasonably fair idea of how things work backstage. 

@scarfrost @bingbinghua @boom-boom-barrett @gatesvengeance-x @loving-wwe @thephenomenonalkingofthebrogues @kiaretta985 @braunstrowman @captainbigdickambrose @penguinsstealingsanity

He talked about his career in mostly chronological order, though there was a bit of a time skip towards the end when Kenny from ITR had to excuse himself & hand over interview duties to one of his team. New guy seemed to jump right to the parting of the ways, skipping over the whole King Barrett & League of Nations runs. Luckily the fan questions filled some of this in. What I’m jotting down here might not be in exactly the order it was mentioned last night, but please be kind to me, I was busy being dazzled by the man himself :)

The main thing, or at least the thing that I as a fan was both most happy and saddened to hear was that leaving when he did was indeed his own decision, but he came to that decision after being burned out from all the false starts and half assed programs that started strong but not were fully optimised. It’s not nice hearing that anyone, especially one of your favourites, is feeling so frustrated by something they love doing to the point that they’re ready to walk away, but at the same time, I’m glad he took that power back and made the choice himself to go. 

He wasn’t bitter in anyway when speaking about WWE, but in no way was he just trotting out the company line either. It was rather refreshing to hear a departed superstar talk the way he did, very even keeled & genuine.  

He doesn’t believe that the wrestler he was when he was signed would be signed now since wrestling as a whole has come on so far. Also said that the wrestlers who haven’t come up through the current NXT system are now at a disadvantage since NXT is Hunter’s baby & it needs to be seen to be paying off.

One of his most funny cringe-making memories from FCW was attempting a ‘Brodus Clay style belly flop’ on Colt Cabana. Due to his very not Brodus Clay style build, it looked ridiculous & Al Snow used the video of footage of what became known as Stu’s Skinny Splash repeatedly as an example of what not to do.

He visibly shuddered & laughed when the subject moved to NXT. 

The NXT Rookies were given a week’s notice of what would happen and yes, it was pretty universal that everyone involved found it hilarious that Daniel Bryan was the Miz’s rookie. That said he spoke very highly of the Miz - called him a solid worker in the ring and a great character performer.

On his own pro, he did say that Jericho gave him advice and he knew that he could count on him to make sure he drew Vince’s attentions. He’s convinced that it was his performance in the Talk the Talk Challenge that clinched the eventual win for him.

When the Nexus invaded Raw, the only instructions they were given were not to touch the public or the cameras, everything else was fair game. Fit Finlay took Wade aside and told him to pull back the canvas to expose the boards. He also said that a woman in the crowd attacked him that night, believing the whole 

He was quite diplomatic on the subject of Cena & the Nexus. He said that the outcome of Team Nexus vs Team Cena at SummerSlam 2010 was changed on the day in order ‘to have the PPV end on a positive note’. He firmly believes that this was a bullshit reason & that having the Nexus lose damaged both his own, and the group’s heel credibility. Apparently plenty of other more established members of the locker room, including Jericho, agreed. He didn’t specifically say that Cena had anything to do with the change in finish, just that to this day, he still didn’t know the real reason. When asked about Cena not wearing the Nexus shirt, he said that he believed it may have been related to merch sale percentages. Instead of getting whatever his own substantial cut of vast volumes of merch sales would be, Cena would be risking selling less of his own only to get a share of the Nexus’s 5% on their shirt sales. Wade was very adamant that this had never been confirmed to him, it was just his understanding.

Mention of the Corre made him shudder even more than mention of NXT. Vince designed that hideous shirt himself in 5 seconds & the spelling was to avoid copyright infringement with a movie, again a 5 second decision by Vince. Everyone thought it was terrible, but since no one was going to say no to the boss, it happened.

Heath Slater’s mama called him out at Heath’s wedding for spreading rumour’s about the Corre’s extra R being as a result of Heath’s stupidity. He said that Heath was the nicest man in wrestling & would literally give you the shirt from his back, but wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box.

JBL was instrumental in getting the Bad News Barrett idea noticed by Vince after Wade had filmed some segments for the JBL & Cole show as Bad News. I think the whole story about that is well known, but I’m mentioned it here just because he said that he knows JBL has been getting a pretty bad rap lately, but he always found him to be a decent guy. There was silence in the room. Zero reaction - you could have heard a pin drop.

The only time he was ever yelled at by Vince was after his “It’s me, it’s me, it’s BNB...” promo, immediately when he returned to Gorilla. Since Vince gave off about him saying he was DDP and he doubt’s that he recalled DDP’s catchphrase from all those years ago, he’s pretty sure that someone else backstage mentioned it & Vince got the wrong end of the stick. Enzo & Cass were backstage at the time on a visit up to see how the main shows worked and Wade getting screamed at over a promo put the frighteners on him a little bit. He admits that this moment was also the beginning of the end for him as it then led to less mic time opportunities which he (quite rightly imo) saw as one of his strengths.

He doesn’t think that either King Barrett or the League of Nations was used to the extent it could have been. League of Nations in particular was a squandered opportunity. Though all four members had what it took to make them a powerful heel faction, very quickly they found that they were being used only to give Roman a credible opposition in order to build his character.

By the time he left, he was so disheartened with wrestling that he didn’t watch a thing until the World of Sport special on UK TV (originally shown on New Year’s Eve). So disheartened too that being in the ring with Stone Cold, Foley & HBK at Wrestlemania was just meh to him.

He didn’t watch the UK Championship Tournament (because he doesn’t have the Network!) and isn’t all that familiar with the promotions or wrestlers of the current British & Irish indie scene. Which sort of makes sense since he was occupied with WWE for so long & the renaissance of the scene is concurrent with his period of disillusionment. He did speak highly of both Marty Scurll & Rampage Brown, both of whom he’s trained with & known for a long while. (This was @jellybelly30‘s excellent question.)

Although he doesn’t believe that John Laurinaitis ever went to bat for him & that this hindered his progress in WWE, Wade doesn’t necessarily have a bad relationship with them. He still has plenty of friends in both talent & production that he is regularly in touch with, even though not in any official capacity - his exact words were ‘if you don’t work for them, you don’t exist’.

He doesn’t forsee a return to the ring any time soon, but he said himself, wrestlers never really retire. He did say though that if WWE were to ask him back under the same sort of conditions as the ones which made him want to leave, he would refuse. He’ll be doing some commentary for WCPW’s PPV this weekend though if anyone is interested.

When asked for his opinion of Vince, he answered that Vince doesn’t do anything just for the good of his heart. He may like to give the impression that he’s doing things out of benevolence, but ultimately his eye is always on the bottom line.

There wasn’t any mention of his acting projects & most of the fan questions were variants of ‘will you go back?’, but all in all it was an interesting night. Like I said at the start of this post, some, if not all of this might be old hat if you’re a fan, but if not, I hope I at least remembered the interesting bits.

And in case you’re wondering...yes, he seems a lot happier now :)

[badnewsbazza]