Wade Barrett Discusses What It Would Take For WWE In-Ring Return
Wade Barrett has opened about up what WWE could offer to get him to step into the ring again.
In the spring of 2016, Wade Barrett competed in a WWE ring for the last time. At the time, Barrett was 35 years old and turned down a contract extension because he felt like it was time to move on to do other things.
During his WWE career, Barrett was a main event-level performer who feuded with big names like John Cena & Randy Orton while also winning the Intercontinental Title five times in his career.
Barrett returned to WWE in the summer of 2010 as an NXT announcer. Over the last four years, he has spent time working on Raw & Smackdown as well. Starting earlier this month, Barrett joined Joe Tessitore as the Raw commentary team for the rest of 2024.
While Barrett is not a regular character on WWE television in terms of storylines, he has been featured more of late due to his close friendship with Drew McIntyre. The English-born Barrett and Scottish-born McIntyre are former roommates who grew up in pro wrestling and WWE together.
This past Monday on WWE Raw in Calgary, McIntyre was upset with Barrett due to Barrett stopping McIntyre from doing more damage to CM Punk the prior week on the show.
Wade Barrett was asked by AceOdds if WWE running major events overseas in the United Kingdom and England specifically interests Barrett about a potential in-ring return, the “Bad News” commentator offered up this response.
“100%. Anytime I get asked this question, if I could have one match for the remainder of my days on this planet and you’re allowed one more match, who would it be? It would absolutely be me against Drew McIntyre at Wembley Stadium.”
“A sold-out Wembley Stadium, I think that is the pinnacle for British wrestling, especially if you’re fans of the era back when Davey Boy and Bret Hart competed in 92 at that SummerSlam.”
There has yet to be a WWE show at the current version of Wembley Stadium, which played host to AEW All In the last two years. However, if WWE decides to hold WrestleMania in England then perhaps Barrett could get that match at Wembley Stadium some day.
Wade Barrett Has Moved On From Being A Full-Time Wrestler Again
The discussion continued with Wade Barrett saying if he could face his good friend McIntyre at Wembley Stadium then perhaps he would do it, but he’s not actively pushing for it. Barrett also said that his days of being a full-time wrestler are a thing of the past.
“If they dangled that in front of me at any point in time, yeah, absolutely. I’m coming back and I’m having that sold-out match at Wembley Stadium. But that is a bit of a pipe dream. It’s not something I’m actively pursuing or trying to pursue. I’m fit and healthy, if something came up where they say, ‘Okay, there’s a match here, would you be interested in doing it?’ If it makes sense to me and I was excited to do it, absolutely, I could.”
“The other thing I would say though, is I look at the kind of schedule that Cody Rhodes has, for example, it’s a killer at this point in time for me. I’m 43 years old, not too far from 44. The prospect of physically grinding that kind of schedule month after month after month as a full-time guy, it’s not for me at this point in time. I’ve kind of mentally moved on from that.”
In other WWE news about Raw, it was announced earlier this week that the show will be two hours in length starting on October 7th until the final episode of the year on December 30th. When the Netflix era of Raw begins in 2025, WWE will have different options in terms of the length of Raw every week.