10 Monster Pushes That WWE Totally Wasted
4. Wade Barrett
For a while, it looked like Wade Barrett was on the verge of becoming WWE’s franchise player.
Having won NXT’s first season, Barrett assembled The Nexus, and led them through one of the most destructive debuts in WWE history. Interrupting a match between CM Punk and John Cena, Barrett and his crew obliterated everything and everyone they could get their hands on. For the next few months, they were absolutely dominant.
Things changed at SummerSlam. A John Cena-led group of WWE loyalists crushed the Nexus in a 7-on-7 elimination match, and the slide began. Logic dictated that they should have won, but the Nexus found their momentum destroyed by Cena who once again looked like Superman in victory.
WWE tried to rehabilitate the group by having Barrett defeat Cena to recruit him to the Nexus that October, but the damage was already done. A WWE Championship match at Survivor Series offered a faint glimmer of hope, and if Barrett had won, his run may just have been saved. Sadly, Barrett lost via Cena’s interference, and the Nexus’ leader took a clean loss to Cena at TLC that December.
Cena crushed Barrett’s push, and killed any chances he had of becoming a credible WWE main event act. For all his positive qualities as a worker, Barrett was never able to recover from this burial. He finally left the company last year.