Arn Anderson Wanted The Nexus To Last Longer, Their First Feud Should Not Have Been John Cena
Photo Credit: Bill Pritchard
The summer of 2010 was a fascinating time in WWE; the Nexus dominated the company and match-themed pay-per-views filled the calendar. Arn Anderson recently discussed this time period on his podcast, ARN, with a specific focus on the WWE Fatal 4-Way pay-per-view.
Arn reflected on the event’s concept and why the Nexus angle should have lasted longer, noting that there should have been more for the stable instead of just putting them up against John Cena and having them fizzle out.
“Those kids were all very, very good, and this is one of those ideas that I thought was excellent but got cut off too short as usual. Other than letting them go on a tirade for months and pile as much heat, you will know when it’s time to give something back to the good guys. But pile as much heat as you can pile on those guys because, if you counted them, how many of them were there? Eight? Some good looking, young studs. They should have been able to slaughter anybody at any time and you’re talking about an invasion,. That’s enough guys to have an invasion, and I just think that it got, when you immediately put them with Cena, you’re gonna have to give something back to Cena before too long because that’s the way of the world, right?
“Well, they should have went somewhere besides Cena first. You know, this is all in the planning stages. When you see that you have something that, hey, damn, these guys look good together, damn, they are good together, they’re vicious, they’re like a pack of wolves. Well, let’s sit down and really look at what we have for these guys and think our way through this, and let’s just see how much mileage we can get out of these guys. Because if they would have got red hot, they could have been attacking heels and babyfaces. You know, that’s just a what-if and I personally thought it was a great gimmick and it just cut off too quickly.”
The Nexus ended up feuding with Cena through the end of 2010, where leader Wade Barrett ended up losing to him at WWE TLC in December. The group later saw CM Punk, Mason Ryan, Husky Harris (Bray Wyatt) and Michael McGillicutty (Joe Hennig) join the fray, but ultimately disbanded in August 2011.
The full episode is available below:
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Chris Siggia contributed to this article. Fans can subscribe to the Podcast Recapper on Patreon; the site features over 100 wrestling podcast reviews with 20+ current wrestling podcasts added weekly.