Wade Barrett Reveals Which Current AEW Star Came Up With The Bad News Barrett Gimmick

It’s been years since Stu Bennett, formerly known as Wade Barrett, has been a WWE star, but he openly shares stories about his run with the company.

Throughout his time on the WWE main roster Bennett took on several different gimmicks, and after a while it seemed like the Bad News Barrett gimmick was picking up steam.

Bennett recently spoke to Chris Van Vliet, and he explained that it was Cody Rhodes who came up with the idea.

“That started on something called ‘The JBL and Cole Show’, which was JBL, Michael Cole, Cody and a couple of other people who had been doing this quirky Internet show for a while. Cody, notorious liar in the locker room, and I say that with all respect because he’s not mean about it, but he likes to tell bulls–t stories about people.”

“One day, I walked into the locker room, and he was telling all the guys in the locker room that when was a kid, he used to watch me wrestling. I was wrestling as a character called ‘Bad News Barrett’ who would walk into the ring and say, ‘hey guys, I got some bad news. The show’s cancelled.’ That was Cody’s running joke.”

The former Intercontinental Champion went on to say that JBL showed the gimmick to Vince McMahon, and Vince decided to run with it.

“When they approached me saying, ‘do you want to be a part of it? Cody’s in it.’ I was like, ‘yeah, you know what? Make me Bad News Barrett.’ I just come in. Bad news. That became a character for a little while. It turned out Vince was shown this by JBL. He liked the character. He thought it was really funny, and he decided then to put me on the main roster.”

H/T Wrestling Inc.