Although he hasn’t had a meteoric rise though the company, Wade Barrett has relatively quickly established himself as a solid upper-mid carder. But just how much potential does he have?
Could he be a WWE champion one day?
Far stranger things have happened in wrestling history, but as of right now, the answer is no.
While he has the size and stamina to wrestle in big matches, Barrett doesn’t have the most impressive move set. The majority of it is punches and kicks and although it’s high impact, his matches don’t have a flow. His setup holds are effective, but he lacks the exclamation point maneuver that guys like Chris Jericho, The Rock, Stone Cold and even John Cena have before the finish. Even the Bullhammer Elbow, even though effective, lacks “Punch.”
Perhaps a standup submission hold, which takes advantage of Barrett’s size and strength, possibly a variation of the Dragon Sleeper, used after the Elbow, which would then become his solid setup maneuver, could make Barrett’s attack more fierce.
But it’s more than his move set. Yeah, Barrett can speak well, but he hasn’t had that memorable promo on his own yet. Consistently made out to be the loser on the mic, WWE creative needs to find the sweet spot for Barrett’s character. The main problem is they haven’t really tried yet. Sure, he’s a capable leader and a heel, but all of his personas have lacked depth. You can’t be bad and evil just for the sake of it. Barrett needs an angle that will flesh out his background more. Show us who he really is and turn the volume up to 11.
Until fans can find a real reason to love or hate Barrett, he’ll wallow away where he is right now, the middle. He’s young enough to have a long career and the WWE has to know that he has the capability to play a huge role in their future programming. The question remains however if they’ll ever find the right combination for Barrett’s career to ever take off.
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