During an appearance on Corey Graves’ After The Bell podcast, Wade Barrett talked about the 1st season of WWE NXT in 2010:
“I’ll be honest the eight of those who were on that first NXT season one, the entire concept of it. I think universally we hated it. First of all, we were termed as rookies which the vast majority of us on that show had been working in the wrestling biz for at least six years or something at that point. I know you [Corey Graves] did the Indies before you came anywhere near FCW and I know you’re a pretty big deal on the indie scene in the UK at the time.
I was kind of working on that scene. I was on the outskirts of it in a different area, but we’d all been traveling around for 30 pounds a night and being lucky if you could actually pay your gasoline at the end of the day and you came away with a small profit. We’ve done that for years. So we were kind of upset that we were being built as rookies. Guys who weren’t deemed [good enough] to be allowed even in the locker room. We’re changing in hallways. So it wasn’t just a storyline of us being rookies and nobodies in the business. We’re actually treated like that behind the scenes for a long time.”
