If you follow Stu Bennett on social media, then you'll know that he recently marked the ten-year anniversary of the formation of the Nexus in WWE. Unfortunately, there aren't really many members left in the company (only Daniel Bryan and Bray Wyatt), and that's a shame, especially when every single one of them had top star potential.
That was particularly the case with Wade Barrett, a Superstar many fans believed would ultimately be the first English WWE Champion. Sadly, this didn't work out that way, but when we recently had the chance to speak to Stu about his new movie I Am Vengeance: Retaliation, we asked whether he looks back at them, and himself, as a lost generation of wrestlers in WWE.
"[Laughs] Of course it plays in the head at times that mistakes were made," he started. "I personally can't complain about how things went for me. There's always things I wished would have played out differently and with some varied minor storyline decisions or presentations, I think I would now be in a very different position to where I ended up in my career. I was very lucky to get to achieve the vast majority of things I wanted to achieve in WWE. I got paid well for it too, and those opportunities and successes that I had during that period have allowed me to transition into a different lifestyle that I have currently where I don't have to take the first gig offered to me to pay my rent or anything like that."
"I'm able to pick and choose, and it's given me a platform where I can get to work with film franchises like I Am Vengeance and get opportunities in that world," Bennett continued. "I've done very well out of my time there and of course there's always a part of me that has it in my head that if this or that decision had not gone that way, things could have turned out very differently here or there and, in a perfect world, that would have happened. But, I'd be lying if I said I was still sitting at home being bitter about decisions made ten years ago."
It is a shame that things didn't work out differently for Bennett, but he's clearly moved on from any frustrations he might have had with WWE, and the fact they so badly dropped the ball on the Nexus (not to mention the Bad News Barrett and King Barrett personas).
Still, he's kicking all sorts of ass in the I Am Vengeance franchise, and you should definitely check that out when it goes on sale tomorrow!