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Report: Wade Barrett Meeting With WWE to Become Full Time Announcer, NXT on Tuesday This Week

By John Canton • Published 31st August 2020

Wade Barrett was a special guest announcer on WWE NXT last week. He was filling in for Mauro Ranallo, who was absent due to a family matter.

Last Wednesday, the WWE NXT brand taped last week’s show and also this week’s show. What we don’t know is if Barrett will be back for the next NXT tapings most likely on Wednesday, September 9. The way NXT’s announce team works is Vic Joseph is at Full Sail University as one of the announcers, then Mauro is home in California and Beth Phoenix is home in Asheville, North Carolina where she lives with husband, Edge. Last week on NXT it was Joseph, Barrett and Phoenix. Today, we learned that Barrett may have more of a long term future in WWE.

It is being reported by PWInsider’s Mike Johnson that Wade Barrett could be working for WWE full-time again except not as a wrestler, but as an announcer. According to Johnson, Barrett recently met with WWE officials to discuss the possibility of a “full-time return to the company as an announcer.” Whether is a deal is done yet, we don’t know right now.

Here’s what Barrett posted on Twitter on his @StuBennett account (Stu Bennett is his real name) about how much fun he had and that he would be back for a second week.

Barrett turned 40 years old earlier this month and the man that used to deliver the “Bad News” to the WWE Universe hasn’t wrestled regularly since he left WWE in 2016 when his contract expired. Prior to working on NXT last week, Barrett had announcing experience with the NWA and also working some British independent wrestling shows.

As a reminder, NXT will air on Tuesday this week because USA Network is showing the NHL Playoffs on Wednesday night. The main event for NXT this week is a big one with Tommaso Ciampa, Johnny Gargano, Finn Balor and Adam Cole competing in a Fatal 4-Way 60-Minute Ironman Match where the man with the most falls will become the new NXT Champion. It was last week on NXT when Karrion Kross was forced to relinquish the NXT Title due to a serious shoulder injury.

TJR Thoughts: This is good news because I thought Wade did an awesome job last week and I think he certainly has a future in announcing if he wants it. Since he hasn’t wrestled in four years, it’s obvious he has moved on in life. There are a few options for Barrett if he signed full time with WWE as part of NXT, but then they’d have four people unless they got rid of somebody. They could add Barrett to Smackdown to make it a three-man team. Corey Graves is locked into his spot on Smackdown. Another option is Raw if Samoa Joe goes back to wrestling and Barrett could take his spot. I assume Byron Saxton will remain on Raw because WWE likes him as a babyface announcer that is good at telling the stories that they want to tell. There’s also the NXT UK brand, but Barrett lives in Florida, so I’m not sure if he would be part of that. It’s unlikely that WWE would negotiate with him as a full-time announcer if they didn’t have a plan for him.

We’ll keep you updated on this story whenever we learn more about it.