Post by Deleted on Feb 7, 2015 14:26:28 GMT -5
What Wikipedia says
While living in Liverpool in his early twenties, Bennett became a champion bare-knuckle boxer, going on to fight in various locations throughout Europe.[10][11][12][13] He competed in a match dubbed by the bare knuckle underworld as "The Battle of Buda", in which he defeated a reputable opponent for a big cash prize.[14] Afterwards, as he walked through an alleyway in search of a taxi to the airport, Bennett was stabbed with an eight-inch blade by someone who attempted to steal the cash. He has refused to elaborate on the incident for legal reasons, but the assailant incurred serious injuries, and Bennett escaped with the cash despite significant blood loss. The attack left him with a 12-inch scar that stretches from his upper back to halfway down his right triceps[14] and the punches he took during his bare-knuckle career left him with a disfigured nose,[10] but he has expressed no regret over that period of his life.[14] He incorporated his bare-knuckle career into his WWE gimmick at the request of Hall of Famer Dusty Rhodes,[10] being introduced to the WWE crowd as a European bare-knuckle champion who had fought on the streets of Europe.[15] His Wasteland move is named after the site of many of his fights.[12]
What Wade says:
On some radio interview
"When I was a little younger I used to fight for money in Liverpool and various places across Europe."
On a kayfabe rookie blog during NXT season
before I made it to NXT I spent several years bare-knuckle fighting across Europe. I had a lot of success and eventually got to fight for some pretty big money. I had one particular fight lined up with a highly notorious opponent in the town of Budapest, Hungary. Hungary is an ex-communist state in Eastern Europe. There is concrete everywhere you look, the sun never shines and the people are as tough as old boots. Basically, it is not the kind of place any of the other NXT rookies would ever dare set foot, but that didn’t phase me in the slightest.
The build up to the fight was so big amongst members of the underworld that some termed the it ‘The Battle of Buda‘ which in my eyes made it the equivalent of Ali and Foreman’s ‘Rumble in the Jungle‘, only far more dangerous. My opponent had a reputation for fighting dirty, much like myself, and there was a rather intimidating atmosphere building around the town in the hours leading up to the fight. The local police tend to turn a blind-eye to this sort of thing in Eastern-Europe which is why so many fights are staged over there. In fact, most of the local police force turned up to bet money on who was going to win. Speaking of money, there was also a rather substantial cash prize on the line for the winner of the fight, a prize which I was going to make sure I’d be taking home no matter what.
Come fight time, we started brawling and to my surprise, it was actually turned out to be one of my easier fights. It lasted about 3 minutes before my opponent’s face was so smashed up that he couldn’t see out of either eye and he had no choice but to say ‘I quit’ in his broken English. I had my hand raised, collected the winner’s money and decided to get out of the area straight away and on the next plane back to the green hills of England. The place was crawling with a whole host of unsavory characters and every single one of them wanted to get their hands on the £20K winners prize that was now sitting in my bag. Having all those eyes burning a hole through you as you stand alone in some Eastern-European hell hole is a very sobering experience, let me tell you.
Unfortunately, I hadn‘t planned my getaway well enough. As I walked through an alleyway in search of a taxi to the airport, I heard footsteps behind me and a split-second later, I was jumped from behind and stabbed in the back with an eight-inch blade. I remember feeling the initial pain of the wound, but it was very quickly masked by numbness as the pain endorphins kicked in. At this point, I was supposed to stay down on the ground in agony whilst my assailant made off with my winner’s money, but things didn’t quite work out like that. I lost a lot of blood that day, but I wasn’t about to lose a penny of my hard-earned cash. I can’t say too much about what happened next due to legal reasons, but what I will say is that if I’ve ended up with 12 inch scars on my body, just imagine how the other guy ended up looking. If you can’t imagine it, just go and look at some minced beef next time you are in the supermarket and that should do the trick. Life for me has always been full of scars and scrapes, but I make sure that I leave any situation with the money in my pocket.
Given the implied unsactionedness of this little fighting career, it's no wonder that there's no concrete proof of him being a 'bare-knuckle champion' anywhere.
All we have are words from Barrett himself, and a couple of battle wounds (f***ed up nose and the huge arm scar).
But let's be real... that nose disfigurement could've come from a sailing soccerball, and the arm could've just been surgery (that being said, it's a long f***ing scar that stretches over many place... I'm not much of a health expert and don't know what kind of surgery that would've been).
![](http://wadebarrett.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/wade.jpg)
![](http://25.media.tumblr.com/fc1b27ffa1114872b7055c19f8cd4f5a/tumblr_mggyopEWN51rhly2xo1_500.jpg)
Between getting his marine biology degree and training to become a wrestler since age 21, when did Wade have time to travel all over the the Wastelands (pun intended, that's where his finisher name originally came from) of Europe?
So, what do you guys think?