Voodoo Magic's Rants, Part I: The Nexus...Biggest Bust Since the Invasion?

So...it has been around a year since I last wrote an article.  You'll have to forgive me, as I finally got a long-awaited teaching job and—as anyone who has ever been a first-year teacher can tell you—it was a trip and a half.  And it didn't leave me any time to write.  However, as they year is winding down, I'd like to jump back in with the first installment in a series of Voodoo Magic's Rants...or, what I've learned about WWE in the past year.

Today's installment has to do with arguably the biggest tragedy in WWE in the last 10 years: the fact that The Nexus was, for all intents and purposes, the single biggest bust since The Invasion.

ALMOST EXACTLY ONE YEAR AGO, WWE finally put on their big-boy pants and gave us something legitimately shocking on Raw: a bunch of no-name, up-and-coming rookies interjected in a John Cena-CM Punk match and beat the living daylights out of anyone and everyone in sight. 

No one was spared, from the reigning champ (Cena) to a top heel (Punk) to the announce team (Justin Roberts, in a move that infamously got Daniel Bryan fired).

It was new, fresh, interesting and most of all, it left the viewers wanting more.  For a long time, people—myself included—had clamored to see new blood in the main event scene, and here we were, just handed a potential jackpot of new talent that had just decimated the established main event players on Raw. 

It was almost too good to be true.  And, as we found out, it was.

Things almost derailed when Bryan choked out Roberts, leading to him getting fired for being too violent on a PG show, while Wade Barrett proved a solid leader for Nexus and a capable lead heel. Bryan could’ve been a far more entertaining villain and antagonist to Cena. 

Bryan was everything that Cena is not—a purist and a competitor instead of an entertainer—and if given enough of a leash to run amok could’ve become a real force for WWE.  Let’s not forget that, while he’s more known for being a stud between the ropes, Bryan’s mic chops are more than satisfactory. He could’ve been a strong enough talker to really get on the crowd’s bad side yet strong enough in the ring to earn their respect. 

In other words, with enough patience, Daniel Bryan could have theoretically become Kurt Angle 2.0, a spiteful, cocky villain who is so good at what he does that you have to respect him, if not like him.  With someone like Bryan at the helm, would WWE have moved away from “wrestling” and become “entertainment” as they have?  With a strong in-ring villain, would performance matter more than promo?

I could spend all night playing “What if Daniel Bryan hadn’t choked out Justin Robert?”, but I have digressed from my original point.  With Barrett at the helm, Nexus still seemed quite formidable, a group of thugs ganging up on WWE performers, planning to take over and threatening everyone in sight.  For awhile, they backed it up. 

Then, as is often the case in WWE, the bottom fell out.

Time and time again, when it really counted, The Nexus were treated like a joke.  They were rookies, and WWE made this fact very clear when they began to target John Cena in earnest as the 2010 went along.  When Nexus DID get the upper hand on Cena, it was because everyone in the group ganged up on him; when Cena got a member of Nexus one-on-one, Cena absolutely obliterated him. 

It all came to a head at SummerSlam, when The Nexus faced off against the team of Cena, Bret Hart, Edge, Chris Jericho, John Morrison, R-Truth and the returning Daniel Bryan and were slaughtered.  The Nexus hung around for awhile, brought Cena into its ranks in one of the most ludicrous storylines I’ve ever seen (Cena joins, Cena gets fired, Cena comes back, etc.) before Cena obliterated Barrett at TLC.

After this, Nexus became a Frankenstein’s Monster—Barrett is kicked out, replaced by CM Punk, who gets rid of Heath Slater and Justin Gabriel (yes, I know, they left on their own, but still) and replaces them with Michael McGillicutty, Husky Harris and Mason Ryan.  The group then turns its attention to Randy Orton and, much like the storyline with Cena, gets destroyed piece by piece.  Barrett, in turn, goes to Smackdown, starts The Corre with Slater, Gabriel and Ezekiel Jackson.  This new group targets Big Show and Kane and—surprise—gets lambasted at WrestleMania XXVII in about 2 minutes.

So let’s track the damage: The group starts out as a legitimate threat, turns into a band of bullies, gets tossed around and beat up, splits up into two groups, then gets tossed around and beat up as two factions instead of one.

In the words of The Miz: Really?

The whole thing, in the end, was ridiculous.  But it was not original.  If this whole set-up sounded familiar, it should.  The infamous Invasion angle went quite similarly: a group of guys, as a collective, looks tough and causes damage.  One-on-one, they were treated like jokes.  For the Invasion to be taken seriously, WWE (at the time, WWF) had to send over two of their top guys in Kurt Angle and Steve Austin; for Nexus to be taken seriously, they had to induct Cena into their ranks.  Neither group accomplished what it wanted, and neither group has a lasting impact today.

What a shame.

NEXT TIME: Michael Cole Was ALMOST The Best Thing Since Mr. McMahon