Trent Barreta

It’s not easy to regularly fall short on your expectations. It’s even harder to rise when you fall.

For Trent Barreta, learning to rise from early failures comes with agonizing but very necessary growing pains. Making his ECW debut in December 2009 at the ripe age of 22, Barreta quickly climbed through the ranks alongside tag team partner Caylen Croft as part of The Dudebusters, who came as close as you could get to earning No. 1 contendership and a future title opportunity. Barreta & Croft then moved on to SmackDown in February 2010, where they were constantly throttled by the likes of Cryme Time and The Hart Dynasty before finally scoring their first victory against Curt Hawkins & Vance Archer more than six months after their WWE debut.

Barretta blindly charged into singles action shortly after the dissolution of The Dudebusters. Save one upset victory over Drew McIntyre in early 2011, Barretta couldn’t buy a win on SmackDown while WWE Superstars such as Cody Rhodes, Jinder Mahal, and Wade Barrett roughed him up on a regular basis.

Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler once sang that “you’ve gotta lose to learn how to win.” That’s a lesson Trent Barretta hopes is true. There’s also “Goonies never say die” – a mantra that should certainly resonate with someone from Barretta’s generation. If the young prospect can keep this in mind, he’ll find a way to learn from a rocky start and build upon the brief successes he’s already experienced in WWE. He’s got nothing to lose and quite literally everything to gain.