5 WWE Superstars John Cena Buried
1. Wade Barrett and The Nexus
I’m going to go ahead and include not just Wade Barrett in this, but the entire Nexus stable. In 2010 there was no hotter group than the Nexus. Before The SHIELD, before the Wyatt Family, before any of the NXT superstars of today arrived they hit the main roster and wrecked shop like few had ever done before. It was a totally fresh concept at the time; having this young and hungry team serve notice on the veterans. And Barrett was their cocky, talented leader.
Keep in mind the Nexus had the likes of a Daniel Bryan, Bray Wyatt (then unfortunately known as Husky Harris), Ryback (also with the unfortunate moniker of Skip Sheffield), Curtis Axel (also with an atrocious name not worth mentioning) and yet Barrett was its unquestioned leader. He was a physical force and a commanding presence, and it can be argued he was the top heel in the entire company at that point, and Nexus the strongest stable WWE had seen in years.
Eventually, they had to run into Mr. Glass Ceiling himself, John Cena. At SummerSlam that year, they faced Cena and a hand-picked team that included Edge, Chris Jericho, and a returning Daniel Bryan. At the time, when the Nexus should have gone over because they were on such a roll, Cena literally gave himself the victory, making sure he was the only guy left standing in the elimination match. That’s right, Cena changed the match to make sure he and he alone defeated the Nexus, burying the group in a way they never recovered from. Don’t believe it? Check out this exchange between Jericho and Edge from the former’s podcast:
"“Jericho: It was WWE Team vs. Team Nexus…and the finish boiled down to you [Edge] and me [Jericho] were in there, but it was Cena against a couple of them. John wanted to do things a certain way and we told him ‘you’re wrong’. Remember that? And he did it anyways, and it sucked. And then afterwards he came over to us and said ‘I should have listened to you, but I wasn’t seeing it that way. And sometimes you just don’t see it that way, you know? Edge: It’s one of those things…where he was adamant about what he wanted to do. And I remember, I was like, ‘fine, I’m out of the match by that point’. Jericho: [Laughes] Exactly. He wanted to get DDT’d on the floor by Barrett, then kick out and beat them both. And you and I were like, ‘that’s the dumbest thing. That’s just throwing it away for no reason’. Edge: They should have gone over because they were so hot. Jericho: We were fighting for Barrett to go over. And, in all fairness, where’s Wade Barrett now? They should have listened to us.”"
Next: AJ Styles Gave John Cena Quote of the Year on WWE Raw (Video)
One thing we can’t do is look back at all of this and call AJ Styles a liar. We can argue that some of these guys Cena has buried weren’t going to go much further, but they certainly would have done more and faster if they had never crossed paths with him.