Impact Wrestling’s Tom Hannifan, formerly known as Tom Phillips in WWE, made an appearance on The Corner Podcast to discuss a wide range of topics.
During it, he recalled suggesting to Michael Cole that WWE should sign Wade Barrett, who was doing commentary work in the NWA at the time. Wade later returned to WWE to do commentary work in NXT, now on SmackDown.
“Again, I’m not taking credit for these people (coming into WWE), I’m just saying at one point or another, I was like, ‘They could be good’ and they got themselves in the door. The one that I was very (excited) about was Wade Barrett. So Wade was killing it on NWA when NWA had really rerisen or come back to power so to speak, no pun intended and anybody could look at what he was doing on color commentary and be like, he’s really good. So I remember probably a year-and-a-half before he signed, I said to (Michael) Cole, I was like, ‘Hey, here’s this tape of NWA’ and like, ‘He’d be good if we ever had a need’ and you just never know when it’s gonna happen. So many people have stories in WWE. It’s like, ‘I did an audition and I got hired a week later.’ ‘I got hired a year-and-a-half later.’ Well it just so happened that in the middle of the pandemic, there was a need and Wade came on and Wade and I had a great relationship when he was a full-time wrestler and he had a great relationship with Cole and Triple H and all these other people so, it was perfect and he walked in and he immediately hit it out the park and I was so happy to see him get the opportunity he has now on SmackDown. I mean, he is phenomenal. So, I wanna be very, very clear, I take no credit for the success of these people. I’m just very glad that maybe at one point or another, I could be like, ‘Hey, this could be an interesting idea’ and then somebody else had the bright idea to pull the trigger on it and then they had to get the ball over the goal line so…”
Quotes via POST Wrestling