10 First Years In WWE That Went From Amazing To Awful
1. Wade Barrett
The leader of 'The Nexus' couldn't have had a better start to life on WWE's main roster after being one of only a scant few to survive the inaugural season of NXT with his credibility still in tact.
His leadership was strong enough to elevate his peers too, with the group's memorable destruction of John Cena (and Monday Night Raw in general) going down in history as one of the company's best ever segments. With brand new dangerous threats so rarely established with such immediacy and veracity in the present day, the jarring reinvention of the 'rookies' as remorseless thugs was a shot in the arm for the whole company.
The malevolent seven (eight before Daniel Bryan was hastily let out of his contract for choking ring announcer Justin Roberts in the assault), were temporarily untouchable, but when they were stopped, they were stopped dead.
John Cena's impossibly quick recovery from a concrete floor DDT to overcome 2-on-1 odds at the climax of August 2010's SummerSlam seven-on-seven battle was the first of many nails in an ungainly coffin. 'The Champ' would make mugs of the group on a weekly basis following that, despite a story forming around him having to join Wade and Co as an official member.
Their singles payoff at December's TLC pay-per-view was a disparate massacre. Wade lay buried under hundreds of chairs at the bottom of the ramp by the match's end, in a move that had far symbolism than it ever should have.