Spending nine years with WWE in his original stint, Wade Barrett enjoyed mass success in the mid-card, being a five-time Intercontinental Champion, 2015 King of the Ring winner, and winner of NXT season one. He was ultimately released on May 6th, 2016, having reportedly opted against signing a new deal the prior August.
One of the highlights of his career came during the November 9th, 2015 episode of Monday Night Raw, as Wade Barrett – then going by King Barrett – got into a brief physical altercation with Wayne Rooney. The segment saw the world-class footballer punch Barrett in the jaw during a bout between Sheamus and Cesaro.
Wade Barrett Was Trending Worldwide Following Wayne Rooney Segment
Speaking exclusively to Inside The Ropes’ own Kenny McIntosh during an Inside The Ropes live event, Wade Barrett has revealed how he knew the Wayne Rooney segment was a smash hit, having gone viral in a country not often associated as a major wrestling area:
“So it was a really awesome segment, it achieved exactly what we wanted to achieve. And then I got to the back, usual handshakes, everyone’s thrilled with it. And I look at my Twitter and this thing has immediately gone viral, and it’s on ESPN in the US, it’s on Sky Sports over here. And I have these alerts set up on my Twitter, which alert me as to what’s going on in the Twitter world and it’ll even tell me when my handle @WadeBarrett, which it was at the time, is trending.
So I was trending in the UK because all these newspapers have picked up on it and when they were getting clicks on the story, and then I was trending in the US and then I was slowly as the sun was rising around the world and people would wake up and it would be on their news around the world, it will be [saying] you are now trending in Australia, you are now trending in Japan, and the one that really, I really knew we’d we’d hit a home run as they say in the US – you are now trending in Nigeria.”
As of this writing, the segment has a little over 17 million views on WWE‘s official YouTube channel.
If you use any quotes from this transcription, please credit the original video and link back to this article with a H/T to Inside The Ropes.