10 Awesome Wrestling Debuts That Quickly Faded Away
1. The Nexus
From one missed opportunity to another, The Nexus’ long-term failure remains WWE’s most stunning deconstruction of a white-hot angle.
NXT started life as a reality show in 2010, and a means of bringing new talent to the forefront. The competition lasted four months in total, and Wade Barrett emerged not only as the victor, but a potential main event superstar. Size, ability, charisma: Barrett had it all, and it’d take a monumental roadblock to stop him reaching the top.
That roadblock was John Cena.
The Nexus’ debut was like nothing we’d ever seen before. It started as Cena was wrestling CM Punk on Monday Night Raw, and Barrett made his way to the ring wearing an odd “N” armband. Michael Tarver and Heath Slater soon joined him, both wearing the same armband, before the entire cast of NXT’s first season was out at ringside.
The Nexus destroyed everything in their path. From ring announcer Justin Roberts to John Cena himself, nobody was safe, and even the ring itself was torn apart. By the time they were finished, it looked like a bomb had gone off on the arena floor: Barrett and his seven cohorts had obliterated ringside and left John Cena for dead.
Then came the burials. The Nexus looked strong until SummerSlam, but were then soundly defeated by a Cena-led Team WWE. It was entirely the wrong booking decision, and Barrett’s men never recovered thereafter. The Nexus (and New Nexus) remained active all the way through to August 2011, but they were summarily dismantled by Cena in SummerSlam’s aftermath, and were never able to recover their lost heat.