Dumb Decisions: The Nexus vs Team Cena

I feel like it’s a rite of passage for a wrestling blogger to complain about the decision for The Nexus to be defeated by Team Cena (officially known as team WWE but this was Team Cena, who are we kidding).

If you live under a rock, The Nexus was a group of wrestlers from the reality show version of NXT season one who were tired of being talked down to by Matt Striker and Michael Cole so they decided the logical course of action was invasion and destruction. On an episode of Raw they showed up during a John Cena vs CM Punk match and destroyed everyone and everything in the arena. Nexus spent the entire summer of 2010 ruining everyone and everything in brilliant fashion. Things all culminated with a showdown, a 7 on 7 elimination tag team match between the Nexus and 7 members fighting for Cena (WWE). Team Cena included the prototype himself alongside Edge, Chris Jericho, R-Truth, Bret Hart (no really), John Morrison and a returning Daniel Bryan, who originally was part of the Nexus but got fired because as we know, he choked Justin Roberts with his necktie in the original Nexus invasion, in Kayfabe, Nexus leader Wade Barrett kicked Bryan out because he allegedly “showed restraint” yeah the only thing he was restraining was airflow to Justin’s brain via nextie choking.

So with the fate of WWE on the line, after Nexus took a two on one advantage on John Cena, who had just been hit with a vicious DDT on the exposed concrete, why am I making this dramatic, you already know John Cena managed to overcome ridiculous odds to win because he’s John Cena. Yes, right when the Nexus was at the peak of their dominance, John Cena made sure to put them in their place with the rare 7 for 1 burial special.

So let’s review just how stupid this was, Nexus, the rookies according to the story, managed to defeat Chris Jericho, Edge, John Morrison, R-Truth, Daniel Bryan and a really old Bret Hart, yet despite the numbers advantage, despite the very protected DDT to the concrete spot, Cena made every second of building the Nexus as this invincible group entirely pointless as he made them look Ryback levels of stupid (wait a minute)

Often, the whole internet fantasy booking thing is a very complicated, very intricate story that requires a lot of things to go exactly right for the ideal story to come to fruition. In this scenario, all we do, all we had to do was salvage the careers of everyone in this white hot group, was have John Cena get hit with Justin Gabriel’s 450 splash instead of avoiding it, throw in a Wade Barrett end of days for good measure, and have Cena take the fall, and have Nexus win.

When you put the Nexus over in the main event of a big 4 PPV, you give them credibility and make the fans care, suddenly they are a major threat both inside and outside the ring. They could go on to rule WWE all the way into WrestleMania 27, where ideally Wade Barrett has captured the WWE championship by now, and the Nexus can start to crumble with putting over a new emerging star, might I suggest, oh I don’t know, DANIEL BRYAN! Yeah, the culmination of the Nexus storyline being Daniel Bryan holding the WWE championship over his former leader in the main event of WrestleMania sounds quite a bit better than Super Cena getting yet another major victory.

When you have Nexus lose here in the fashion in which they did, you’re taking any reason for the audience to care about these young wrestlers, and completely throwing it away to feed Cena’s stock, which had been undoubtedly the highest of any wrestler in the company by a laughably large margin. Who does this benefit? John Cena, who does this hurt? All 7 Nexus members, this dumb booking decision gets talked about on the internet frequently as it should because it is undoubtedly one of the dumbest decision in wrestling history.

Wrestling Trivia: When was the last official on screen mention of the Nexus as a current group?

DM @JackDownVsRaw on Twitter for the answer