An odd beef has emerged online this week, which purportedly stems from comments Wade Barrett made on WWE’s Clash in Paris pre-show about Nikki Bella and her Intercontinental title match against Becky Lynch on that Aug. 31 show.
Comments Bella made on The Nikki & Brie Show, her podcast with twin sister Brie revealed her issue with Barrett:
“I would love to have a conversation with Wade Barrett. He avoided me on Monday, which was shocking because he always comes up and says hi to me. He tried to avoid making
eye contact with me in the hallway.
“I understand when you wanna be a heel commentator and stuff, but then there’s one thing of like — Michael Cole does this beautifully, and this is why Michael Cole’s one of the greatest commentators. He knows how to take a life story and put it into what we do, because that is real. We don’t go out there as robots or as superheroes. We are actually professional athletes and we go through real things, and we have to put that a part of it.
“And honestly that stuff really doesn’t bother me because I get it. I was watching the pre-show and I saw what Wade was saying about me even on the pre-show, and I was sitting there getting ready in the locker room like, ‘Oh. Okay. That’s fine.’
“But what I loved was how Michael Cole then put it about what I’ve been through, what got me here, this era of me. All the things, haven’t had a title match in over seven years.”
Out of curiosity, we went back and found what Barrett about Clash in Paris’ Women’s Intercontinental championship clash from the Countdown. It’s at the 50 minute mark of the show, and featured Barrett playing the full heel, Big E a rational tweener, and Cole the babyface. As such, Wade’s critique is Nikki is the most damning, but it still sounds a lot like what most bad guy commentators would say given the feud
“Since when is being desperate for success an insult? Becky Lynch is somebody who has completely changed the game from Nikki Bella’s era — the Divas Era. And Nikki Bellas was fantastic. She was the top performer within the confines that she had to work in that era. The game has changed — it’s not even close these days. Now, Becky Lynch is somebody who has dragged women’s wrestling into the 21st century and beyond. She is the standard bearer of how great women’s wrestling is today. Becky Lynch was a Hall of Famer many years ago. She won it all, many years ago. She can go and retire on a desert island with all her millions or clear off to Hollywood any time she wants. The fact that she is desperate to stay #1 in this industry is something we should be applauding, and I am absolutely disgusted in Nikki Bella’s words.”
He later talks about how he and Bella came up through developmental together, calling her “fantastic” but still just “the best of her era” and someone trying to “recapture former glory”. He doesn’t reference her divorce (Cole indirectly does while crediting Nikki for going ”through so much in her personal life to get here today”). It fits the storyline Bella and Lynch where telling on-screen.
We’re not exactly sure what Nikki’s issue is… and Wade {whose real name is Stu Bennett) doesn’t seem to be either, reposting aggregation of Bella’s podcast quote and adding:
I had no idea Nicole felt this way, and I’m happy to have this ‘conversation’ any time she likes. I wish she’d brought it up when we said hello to each other at Raw, rather than via her podcast. I don’t understand the avoiding claim at all, simply not true.
But perhaps Bella really was hurt hearing that from Barrett? We can never know what upsets someone else, or really why. Maybe she’s working, stirring up controversy for The Nikki & Brie Show?
Let us know if you have another explanation we’re overlooking.
