Wade Barrett never received the WWE Championship reign many fans felt he deserved, and after successful stints as “Bad News Barrett” and “King Barrett,” he left the company in 2016.

The former Intercontinental Champion returned in 2020 as a member of NXT’s commentary team and, since 2022, has hopped between RAW and SmackDown (he now serves as the blue brand’s lead commentator alongside Corey Graves).

A great deal has happened since his WWE return, including the ousting of Vince McMahon. Triple H has been calling the shots since the former WWE Chairman was pushed out of the company for good earlier this year and, based on countless interviews with talent – not to mention what we see on TV each week – it’s fair to say WWE is much better for it.

We were recently fortunate enough to submit some questions for Barrett as part of an interview conducted by AceOdds. Here’s what he told us about how WWE has changed in this new era.

A lot of wrestlers are talking about how WWE has improved under Triple H’s watch – what’s been the biggest difference for you behind the SmackDown commentary table?

Well, I’ve noticed that and I’ll compare my time as a commentator to my time in the ring. And I think there are a lot more surprises these days. And we’ll call it the Triple H era, the Paul Levesque era, whatever it’s being called now. I think something we’re really good at and it reminds me of being a fan back in the late 90s in the attitude era, you can’t miss a show at the moment. It feels as a fan and even as a commentator when I’m at home watching the other shows, I feel like I cannot miss it because something big is going to happen every week.

There was a time when I was an in-ring guy during the kind of early 2010s when the show at times felt a little formulaic. It felt a little obvious that these two guys are going to be feuding with each other for the next four months and we’re going to have six different rematches between them. We’re going to have different variations of how the match ends, but I know what’s going to happen. If I miss an episode, it’s probably not going to be that important. Now it feels like if you miss even one 15-minute segment between commercials, you could miss something massive. We watched Raw last night and the Wyatt 6 stuff, every time there is a show over the next few months, there is going to be a big development in that storyline.

And the same with the bloodline stuff on SmackDown. It feels like every week there is something massive going on. And that’s really exciting to me as a commentator. It keeps me guessing, it keeps me motivated and excited. And I think you can probably see from our viewing figures and the people attending the live shows, we’re constantly selling out at the moment. I think it really has people hooked in and it’s keeping people guessing and being hyper-creative with our script writers and the people who are working behind the scenes on stuff. So, I’d say the management is currently taking us in a really good direction and the rewards are there for everyone to see.

It’s no secret that having Vince in their ear proved borderline torturous for WWE’s commentary teams, so we’re sure Barrett has noticed a difference in that respect as well.

He’s not wrong that RAW, SmackDown, and NXT are once again must-see. A large part of that comes down to more compelling storylines and an increased focus on professional wrestling over sports entertainment.