Wayne Rooney’s infamous slap of Wade Barrett during WWE appearance stemmed from row over striker ‘diving’ for Man Utd

WADE BARRETT revealed Wayne Rooney’s infamous slap on him during a WWE appearance in 2015 stemmed from a row on Twitter.

Barrett, a passionate Preston fan, was gutted after the ex-England captain scored an 88th minute penalty for Manchester United against his club.

The former ‘Nexus’ leader then took to Twitter to call the England forward a diver for how he won the penalty.

Rooney, whose kids are big wrestling fans, then challenged Barrett to a WrestelMania match – which never materialised.

Instead, when the WWE came to the UK, the Premier League legend was involved in a scripted scrap as he slapped Barrett across the face.

Lifting the lid on the story, Barrett told Metro: “At this point, I’m heartbroken.

“I immediately in my anger, tweet Wayne Rooney accusing him of diving, threatening to give him a Bullhammer’.

“Then I put my phone down, I move on, calm down, forget about it.

“He ends up replying, this goes into a kinda jokey back and forth where we’re going to have a WrestleMania match, but then obviously it all dies away and nothing happens.

“I start suggesting to the guys in the management team. He wanted to come backstage with his kid, and meet Triple H and a few others.

“They brought me into the room too, we had a quick chat and suggested this idea to him. He was down for it, his kid was really excited about it.

“We did what we did – had a little jaw-jack, I talked a little smack like I tend to do, and he slapped me!

“That was it, it was a lot of fun.”