Vince McMahon asked former five-time Champion to change his gimmick on WWE TV

WWE star Wade Barrett recently spoke about how Vince McMahon was a big proponent of the "Bad News Barrett" gimmick.

Barrett had a decent run with the company, debuting with the formidable faction The Nexus. After splitting from the stable, he went on a singles run and won the Intercontinental Championship five times. Post his in-ring career, he joined the announce team, appearing on NXT and more recently on SmackDown.

Wade Barrett was the special guest on this week's episode of Out of Character. He detailed how he came up with the bad news gimmick for an online show and fans loved it.

"JBL and Michael Cole had a show they were hosting on WWE.com. They got a bunch of the guys in there. (...) They came up to me and said, 'Do you wanna be part of the show? Is there a zany character you wanna do?' I'm like, 'Yeah, I'll just be Bad News Barrett. I'll just come in and give people bad news.'"

Barrett said JBL showed clips of him to Vince McMahon and the boss pushed him to bring the gimmick to TV, thus rejuvinating his career.

"JBL got very excited about it and he took it to Vince McMahon and showed it to him in one of the meetings, 'Hey look at this, we've got this character.' Vince loved it and played it over and over again apparently. I wasn't aware of any of this happening. (...) So he said, 'Okay, we're gonna have Wade do that from now on. He's just gonna come out and keep giving out bad news.' That seemed to then catch fire and take me in a whole different arc in my career." [From 38:16 - 40:10]

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Wade Barrett repaced Pat McAfee on WWE SmackDown

Triple H recently announced that SmackDown announcer Pat McAfee was going on a hiatus to pursue an opportunity with ESPN for College GameDay.

WWE quickly revamped the announcement teams for all its brands. Wade Barrett moved from NXT to SmackDown to join Michael Cole, while Corey Graves and Kevin Patrick will handle things on RAW. Meanwhile, Vic Joseph and Hall of Famer Booket T will form the NXT commentary team.

What do you think of Barrett as a SmackDown announcer? Let us know in the comments section below.

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If you use quotes from this article, please credit Out of Charcater and add a H/T to Sportseeda for the transcript.