Wade Barrett

Stuart Alexander Bennett was born in Penwortham on 10 August 1980. His mother was a social worker, while his father was an accountant. He has an older brother who manages a supermarket. He grew up in nearby Preston, then moved to Wales with his family at the age of six. Despite spending much of his childhood in Wales and admitting that he does not remember anything about Preston, he does not consider Wales his home and has never lived in one place for more than nine years. He was inspired to become a professional wrestler by his idol Davey Boy Smith, and named the WWF Intercontinental Championship match in the main event of SummerSlam 1992 between Smith and his other childhood hero Bret Hart as his favourite match of all time. He earned a degree in marine biology from the University of Liverpool, after which he went to work in a science lab and as a recruitment consultant while training to become a wrestler.

While living in Liverpool in his early 20s, Bennett became a champion bare-knuckle boxer who would fight in various locations throughout Europe. He competed in a match in Budapest dubbed "The Battle of Buda" by the bare-knuckle underworld, in which he defeated a reputable opponent for a substantial cash prize. Later, while walking through an alleyway in search of a taxi to the airport, he was stabbed with an eight-inch knife by someone who attempted to steal the money; he has refused to discuss certain details for legal reasons, but admitted that he seriously injured his attacker and escaped with the money despite significant blood loss. The attack left him with a 12-inch scar that stretches from his upper back to halfway down his right arm, and the punches he took during his bare-knuckle career left him with a disfigured nose, but he has expressed no regret over that period of his life. He incorporated his bare-knuckle career into his WWE gimmick at the request of Dusty Rhodes, being introduced to the WWE audience as a bare-knuckle champion who had fought on the streets of Europe. His Wasteland move is named after the site of many of his fights. Under the Wade Barrett name, Bennett had a small role as Kilroy in the crime thriller film Dead Man Down (2013), for which he adopted a New York accent. He also starred as assassin George "Bishop" Edwards in the action thriller film Eliminators (2016). Credited under his real name, he starred as John Gold in the action films I Am Vengeance (2018) and I Am Vengeance: Retaliation (2020), both of which received primarily negative reviews; however, Bennett received praise for his performance, with Variety noting that Retaliation showed "sufficient comic chops to occasionally undercut Gold's macho with self-parody".