Jump The Shark Moments

[Evil Vito]

Originally Posted by The CyNick The idea that Barrett was ready to take the ball with Cena at WM27 is utterly absurd. The guy isn't even ready to headline NOW and its 5 years later.

Oh bullshit. The man could cut a promo like nobody's business from the second he walked into a WWE ring. And in the ring, he was quite good. WWE wouldn't have been throwing him in main events against Cena and Orton for much of fall 2010 if they didn't think he could handle the spot. If WWE wanted to have the big Cena/Barrett blowoff at WrestleMania 27, it could have easily been done and would have been believable. And of course he doesn't seem like he can headline now...because they've given him precisely nothing to work with in that time.

His body betrayed him with injuries on a few occasions but beyond that they've never treated him as anything less than a midcarder. They stuck the KOTR gimmick on him and then immediately had him doing clean jobs to everybody.

But anyway...I don't think there was any way to have Nexus come in and go on a tear WITHOUT getting Cena involved. Why would Cena just sit back and allow a group to come in and destroy Raw without him intervening? The problem I feel was just rushing things too quickly. Once he got "fired" after Survivor Series he was back in a freaking week and single-handedly killed every member of the group in less than a month. And really once he got "fired" they booked themselves into a corner because they were never going to willingly keep him off TV, so they had no choice but to wrap things up quickly.

Instead had they just had Cena bite the bullet and unwittingly help Barrett win the belt over Orton at Survivor Series, they could have put the seeds in motion for the eventual WM 27 match and allowed the angle to work itself out naturally over the coming months. Cena would keep doing Nexus' bidding to the point where his friends (other faces) continually question his integrity, but Cena never goes full heel because you know his job is on the line and that he really has no choice.

Then at the Rumble he can have his proper "screw this Nexus bullshit" moment, and turn on his brethren during the Rumble match itself. Cena wins the thing and Barrett can no longer fire him since the Rumble winner is contractually guaranteed a title match at Mania. Hell during the time between the Rumble and Mania you can end up having Cena destroy the Nexus one by one like Orton wound up doing in the build to his Punk match. At least then it's not rushed and building to a big moment. And then of course Cena gets the win, Barrett is dethroned, and you go from there.

You really think people wouldn't have preferred a long-term, well-built program like that to Cena vs. Miz, which featured Miz being a complete afterthought in the whole build despite being the fucking CHAMPION? I loved the Miz at that time and even I thought that build was completely rotten, and a big part of the reason WM27 was completely forgettable.

Oh and as for the whole "they're still employed so Cena didn't hurt them" bit, that's not the point. It's not that many of them were hurt by being part of Nexus...it's that absolutely any of them could have been debuted at a later date in the gimmicks they're in now and be in the same exact spot. Nobody looks at any of them and says "oh yeah, that guy was a part of the Nexus" because the Nexus angle was a complete flop.