Is Wade Barrett a Future WWE Champion?

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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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 14262 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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