8 Hyped Wrestling Matches RUINED By Backstage Politics
5. Team WWE Vs. The Nexus (WWE SummerSlam 2010)
Context is important here, because pearl-clutching over the fate of the Nexus in 2026 feels, well, hilarious.
Wade Barrett was the only realistic prospect of the lot, even at the time, and to underscore how badly his singles run went, he spends these days constantly self-deprecating his in-ring career when commentating on SmackDown.
The thing is, at the time, the Nexus group was a relative ratings smash. Numbers tumbled following WrestleMania 26; by the end of April, WWE Raw was lucky to scrape past a 3.0. When the stable formed on June 7, unified in vengeance by their humiliation on the NXT game show, the overall number shot up by almost a full half point across the next few weeks. Some episodes of Raw - June 21 (3.52), July 26 (3.51) - actually out-performed star-studded editions in the build towards WrestleMania.
This was more an indictment of the formula, rather than a glowing endorsement of the group on its own merits, since the Nexus threatened a disruption of it. Still, as far as the old hot WWE summer angle went, the Nexus storyline was a bigger hit than the Summer of Punk a year later. David Otunga Vs. Justin Gabriel was never, not once, a future WrestleMania event. The Nexus was not the Shield. The Nexus was a vehicle for Wade Barrett, in whom the fans did actually believe for a few months - until backstage politics ruined the whole thing.
It didn’t quite feel like the fate of WWE was on the line at SummerSlam 2010, because the stakes weren’t big enough for the Nexus Vs. Team WWE seven-man elimination tag - but it felt like a breakthrough moment for Barrett at a time when WWE was gasping for a new main event-level talent. In 2010, Shawn Michaels had retired, Batista went on indefinite hiatus, and by SummerSlam, Triple H was a few months into his corporate excursion. SummerSlam was a less than ideal time to kill Barrett’s push dead, but what’s what John Cena allegedly did.
Per Chris Jericho and Edge, who discussed the match in disbelief on the former’s podcast, it was Cena’s idea to no-sell the DDT on exposed concrete and win, in 90 seconds, a handicap match against Barrett and Gabriel. Vince McMahon approved the idea, because that’s what promoters do for their top stars.
Even if Cena was prescient, and correct in determining that Barrett didn’t have it, he was stupid: he buried his money heel ahead of the blow-off. TLC 2010 (195,000) was down in buys from the prior year’s show (228,000).