Interview | Stu Bennett (Wade Barrett)
The Argyle match-day programme, The Pilgrim, has been expanded by eight pages this week, and is now 76 pages long, while still being £3.50 to purchase.
One of our additional features is an interview with WWE wrestler and commentator Wade Barrett, who is not only a massive Preston North End fan, but has a history with our gaffer, Wayne Rooney.
Read below for a sneak peek of the article, which will be published in full in Saturday’s programme…
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In November 2015, the sports entertainment juggernaut WWE brought their flagship show Monday Night Raw to the Manchester Arena.
During the show, an imposing figure named Wade Barrett, wrestling at the time under the moniker King Barrett, marched to the ring. Known to WWE audiences as a ‘heel’, or a bad guy, the Englishman achieved an unusual feat of getting his countrymen to boo him. However, the target of his ire was not the fans in general, just one man in the front row – Wayne Rooney.
Soon after this verbal bashing, Barrett was backing up his pal, Irishman and former champion Sheamus, in a match. During the bout, Barrett prodded a finger in Rooney’s chest, and found that the Manchester United striker – and now, of course, Argyle boss – was no shrinking violet. Rooney slapped Barrett, Sheamus was distracted, and lost the match he was in at the time. The crowd, meanwhile, lost their minds. Whatever they had expected to see at Raw that night, Rooney decking Barrett was probably not among their thoughts.
Much has changed since then. Rooney is now at Home Park, and Barrett – real name Stu Bennett – has long since hung up his wrestling trunks and boots. However, the 44-year-old is now a leading voice on WWE programming, as the co-commentator on Monday Night Raw, and on occasional ‘Premium Live Events’, as WWE refer to their big shows, such as Wrestlemania, the Royal Rumble and the upcoming Survivor Series.
Full disclosure: I spent well over a decade as a wrestling writer, for major newspapers and websites, travelling the world to cover events. I have interviewed 28 world champions from that company alone, and countless other luminaries in the industry. Oddly, despite our years active in our respective areas of the wrestling industry crossing over, Bennett and my paths had never crossed.
Then, a hefty penny dropped. Argyle v Preston North End was upcoming, and I knew Stu was purportedly a huge PNE fan. A couple of emails later, and I had a time to speak to the one-time leader of the Nexus faction, and King of the Ring, the following day.
When a celebrity is said to be a football fan, naturally there are occasionally queries about the validity of their fandom. I can tell you that within minutes of speaking to Stu – me in Devon, him in Los Angeles – we were already talking about his all-time favourite player, Sean Gregan, and there was no doubt how deep his PNE feelings run.
Bennett’s wider football knowledge is there too. With all those other wrestlers I have interviewed over the years, there was precious little chat – zero, in fact – about lower league football. Believe or not, John Cena never brought up the name Adrian Littlejohn like Stu did.
“My dad is a diehard PNE fan,” said Stu, in a familiar voice which is still recognisably Lancastrian, but with a slight Transatlanic twang to take the edge off. “He’s about to turn 80 years old. He was one of those standing outside the ground when he was seven, waiting for Tom Finney’s autograph.
“My dad is impressed with my wrestling stuff – he was never a wrestling fan, but he’s proud of me – but when I get to take him to Deepdale and sit in the directors’ box, or he sees me taking pictures with the players, then he thinks his son has really made it!
“For someone like me who grew up with my dad taking me to games, it’s incredible. I haven’t actually been to Argyle, but I’ve been to Exeter, to Bristol Rovers, standing in the rain on bad terraces. The toilets at Deepdale used to just be a wall, that was it.
“That was my background going to watch football, going to some – not trying to insult anybody – terrible stadiums! So, to get a bit of red-carpet treatment now at PNE, the club have always gone above and beyond with me. They’ve been very cool, I’m very lucky. It means a massive amount to me.”
One of WWE’s leading stars right now is Cody Rhodes, who is the WWE Universal Champion. Stu has even managed to get Cody into a Preston shirt, creating a bit of buzz, especially when WWE’s wrestlers were on tour in the UK last week.
“That’s been a 14-year project!” laughed Bennett. “Cody and I been friends since 2010, when I debuted, and we travelled together a bit. I was probably boring him with tales of the Preston North End glory days, with Sean Gregan!
“I waited for the day that he embraced PNE to the slightest extent, and then blew it out of the water to try to convince everyone he is a big fan. I managed to get a picture with him in a PNE shirt, with the WWE Universal Championship. He is the number one wrestler on the planet right now, so to get that guy in PNE shirt is the pinnacle. Now I have to get him to Deepdale!”
So then, to Bennett’s interaction, as King Barrett, with Wayne Rooney.
Few, these days, pretend that wrestling is anything other than pre-determined, but the industry quite rightly baulks at words like ‘scripted’ and, particularly, ‘fake’. The physical demands of active in-ring action are arduous, and the very best performers, though perhaps working to an outline, frequently have the need to improvise in front of their live crowd.
Of course, Rooney’s involvement in the story – known in wrestling as an ‘angle’ – was discussed and arranged in detail, especially the denouement, when Wayne’s physical involvement capped things off. That said, even Stu will probably admit that his fall from the slap was less like the great Bret Hart and more like referee Paul Alcock collapsing having been pushed by Paolo Di Canio!
The concept is something that Bennett says the Gaffer was a bit reluctant to engage with, initially, but was talked round. And, for Bennett, thank goodness he did.
“Looking back, it was definitely a surprise,” he said. “I suppose we have our heads in a wrestling bubble, and say ‘just do it Wayne, it will be really easy’, but obviously from his perspective, he’s a major name, a high-profile star around the world, and he doesn’t know us.
“He’s a wrestling fan, I think, but he sees a bunch of big guys, he doesn’t know if we are going to make him look stupid. We didn’t have a prior relationship; he had no reason to trust us.
“He was initially a little apprehensive about it, but I think his son talked him into a bit, and by the end of it I think it worked really well. It was a great viral moment that went round the world. It is still one of the things people most often ask me about.
“It was a 60-second thing that happened on TV a decade ago, but people still talk about it. When you think about the hours and hours of TV we produce every week, to get those little segments that are remembered by fans for a long time is really cool.
“Wayne was obviously a huge part of that, and I’ll always be appreciative for him, for agreeing to do it, and how good he was with us.”
