YMMV / The Nexus

• Author's Saving Throw: In NXT, Otunga was pushed a lot, and the amount of exposure he got to the amount of skill he has made many people accuse him of being a Creator's Pet. In The Nexus, after he was distrusted by all of his fellow Nexus members for his arrogance and petty scheming, the accusations have stopped.
• Badass Decay:
  • The end of the SummerSlam match can be seen as this. Also, Raw the next night featured all of Nexus in individual matches against Team WWE members. Only Barrett and Sheffield (and by extension, Otunga) got clean wins; all the other victories were won on pure luck. Tarver only beat Daniel Bryan because the Miz got involved, Gabriel beat Orton because of Sheamus, Slater beat Edge by countout when he barely made it back into the ring, and Young lost his match against John Cena. This made Nexus look incredibly inept.
  • Even with the above, the Nexus were a legitimate threat to WWE, beating down the top wrestlers and even getting John Cena fired for a while. New Nexus was simply just CM Punk using them as poor muscle to beat down Randy Orton, and he was punting members out practically every week. It got so bad that at one point, Punk was the only member of the New Nexus left. Let's put it this way - In less than two months, Randy Orton did more damage to the New Nexus than John Cena managed to do to the Nexus in six months. Fast forward to the aftermath of Money in the Bank with CM Punk leaving the promotion with the WWE title, the only members of the New Nexus were David Otunga and Michael McGillicutty, with Mason Ryan on the injured reserve, and once Otunga and McGillicutty got a new Titantron and music, there was no more Nexus.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Justin Gabriel is beloved by the smarks for his skill and the casual fans for his upbeat persona.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Gabriel is beloved by the smarks for his skill and the casual fans for his upbeat persona.
  • A recent poll on WWE.com placed Skip in the top five of their "11 to watch in 2011" list, despite the fact that Skip's been out of action for over half a year. Whether this was Foreshadowing of the WWE's massive push given to him as Ryback in 2012 is anybody's guess.
• First Installment Wins: Whereas the New Nexus and the Corre are forgotten today, the original 7-man Nexus are still iconic.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Nexus member Darren Young's facial features bear such a strong resemblance to John Cena's◊ that fans took to calling him "Black John Cena;" this became an Ascended Meme when it was actually acknowledged on-air and Cena got a Funny Moment out of it. Darren mentioned it in passing, but Cena cracked everyone up when he said that Darren Young proved his worst fear: That his mom DID have an illicit affair with Buckwheat.
  • Moments after the initial attack, fans were referring to the rookies as the NxtWo. In the same vein, people quickly began referring to the Corre as the "Nexus Wolfpac," due to being a splinter group in the same vein as Wolfpac.
  • Cena, at one point, when seeing all seven members of Nexus lined up on the entrance ramp shoulder-to-shoulder, referred to Nexus as "NNNNNNN".
  • In the few hours since Cena joined the group, people were already referring it as "CeNexus."
  • Heath Slater is constantly compared to the Wendy's girl. This stemmed from the same Cena promo that the Young/Buckwheat joke was made, and a picture of his head Photoshopped onto the Wendy's logo accompanied it.
  • Within hours of CM Punk joining the group, people began referring to the group as NexSES, a portmanteau of Nexus and SES (Straight Edge Society, another stable that Punk was the leader of).
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Wade Barrett promised the winds of change would be blowing through the WWE when he started the original Nexus with a Wham Episode. Take a look what CM Punk has done in the months since Money in the Bank 2011 while the New Nexus quietly disbanded.
  • David Otunga has been considered the weakest link in the Nexus due to his limited wrestling ability and, at least in the Barrett-run group, self-preserving tendencies. He's the most prolific champion in the history of the Nexus, winning the tag team titles with two different partners, and also the only member that lasted in the Nexus the entire time.
  • Speaking of Otunga and CM Punk, his show name was "Punk" in I Love New York.
  • When Randy Orton punted out all of the New Nexus underlings in 2011, Husky Harris was the only one to never return. Fast forward a few years later and he is by far the most popular of the group's four underlings.
  • Wade Barrett was the leader of the invasion. Several years later, he would be on the receiving end of a similar invasion while working as the GM of another promotion.
• Ho Yay:
  • We're getting there between Cena and Wade Barrett, mostly since Barrett seems to be getting a sadistic thrill out of bossing Cena around. Barrett at one point ordered Cena to clean the dressing room, and that when he was done with that "you can scrub my back".
  • Gabriel and Slater have always been quite friendly with each other beginning NXT season 1 and continuing into the Corre. The two do like ruffling each other's hair and ultimately walked out of both the Nexus and the Corre together after being ordered by Punk to beat each other with kendo sticks and repeatedly abandoned by Barrett respectively. And any time they've interacted since splitting up looks like a bantering lovers' spat. Well, at least as much as AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels do, and that's listed under Ho Yay.
  • One-sided with Barrett. Otunga acts like an abused spouse around Barrett, making him more of a Starscream Expy. Which makes sense, because again, Barrett verbally abused Otunga to clinch his victory over him for the leadership bid in the first place.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • When word came that Danielson was released because of the tie choking, many jokes were made about Daniel Bryan and ties. It quickly spread to the indie scene, where guys would win matches by choking their opponents with ties. When Danielson returned to CHIKARA for the first time since his firing, instead of the usual streamers, Bryan was greeted with a rain of neckties from the fans. At Ring of Honor's Death by Dishonor VIII, where El Generico choked out Kevin Steen with a tie during a brawl, with announcer Dave Prazak exclaiming "He should be fired!" Even TNA got in on the fun with their own Take That! on the situation. During a Street Fight involving Taylor Wilde and Sarita on Impact, Sarita grabbed a fan's purse and choked out Taylor with the straps. Taz, on commentary, remarked that people had been fired for that sort of thing.
  • *Cena sad face*, in response to Barrett ordering Cena around.
  • The group that should eventually rise up and take down The Nexus? "Againstus".
  • The Corre's entrance music keeps changing slightly every show. "We are currently on version 1,153,439."
• More Popular Spin-Off: The Nexus rivals only The Shield as the most popular stable of the 2010s. NXT season 1 is barely remembered today.
• Narm Charm: Many fans compare Skip Sheffield to Batista, due to some of the "serious" faces he makes (rather Hilarious in Hindsight considering later Nexus member Mason Ryan's uncanny resemblance to Batista).
• Never Live It Down: McGillicutty's promo from the season finale of NXT season 2. Thanks to that promo he'll forever be associated with redundancy.
• Nightmare Retardant: The Nexus as a whole was pretty intimidating. Until you take one look at, but then you look at Darren Young's giant ass hair and Justin Gabriel's Bishounen look with his floopy appearance. He looks like a villainous Ricky Martin. Not to mention Heath Slater, who despite having multiple wins over Chris Jericho, looks and still is something of a goofball.
• Not Badass Enough for Fans: Slater does not seem to stand out compared to the other members of Nexus in either talent or mic skills. However, he has silently become the Nexus workhorse and most fans have not noticed: When Wade Barrett was in England taking care of his Visa issues, it was Slater that led the attack on the WWE Legends; at the Team WWE vs. Team Nexus match at SummerSlam, he pinned both Chris Jericho and Edge, and a few weeks later during a 5 on 5 elimination tag team match, he pinned the WWE Champion Sheamus, which combined with a one-on-one victory against Jericho back on NXT, means that he has pinned more World champions than any member of The Nexus/Corre (and on February 21, 2011, Slater added John Cena to his list of defeated World champions, earning he and Gabriel their third tag title reign); and in a non-kayfabe example, in the aforementioned Team WWE vs. Team Nexus match at SummerSlam, he was the one that worked with Bret Hart. Considering Bret's health issues, they trusted Slater with the biggest burden of the match (as opposed to Barrett or Gabriel) and he performed very well.
• Older than You Think: Justin Gabriel has been wrestling for longer than John Cena, Randy Orton, and Batista.
• Seasonal Rot: General agreement is that this happened when CM Punk joined the group, usurped Barrett, and turned it into the New Nexus (while Barrett went to SmackDown and formed the Corre). The stable's credibility had already been shot when Cena got fired and proceeded to use his new freedom to singlehandedly destroy the Nexus and wreck Barrett, but they still had the chance to rebuild on their own after that was over. When Punk took over, he overshadowed the entire group, cutting off any possibility of the other members developing characters and credibility of their own, and used them not to terrorize RAW, but as Dumb Muscle in his vendetta against Randy Orton, even admitting at one point that he never gave a damn about any of them. The storyline finally died when Punk dropped the Pipebomb and started the Summer of Punk, and by that point everyone agreed it was a Mercy Kill that was long overdue.
• Strawman Has a Point: Despite being portrayed as villains, the rookies do have legitimate complaints against WWE management. Just have a look at the first elimination week. The previous week, Daniel Bryan and Michael Tarver had both said that they themselves should be eliminated - Bryan because he hadn't won a match on NXT yet and it only stands to reason that if a guy can't win any part of a competition he shouldn't be voted to win the whole thing, and Tarver: because if he's gone, "then every last one of these walking dead bodies are safe."
  They were all informed from jump street that polling from the WWE Superstar pros and the fans would be deciding these eliminations, yet on May 11th, 2010, Bryan and Tarver have to hear Matt Striker be the man to inform them to their faces that WWE management turned their statements around as "not believing in yourself" in order to eliminate them. This was probably exhibit A of the crap the eight NXT "rookies" had been put through that season that they felt was disrespectful. If Nexus (in character) really was in the works during the competition, it's a wonder they showed enough restraint to let said competition decide their leader instead of destroying Striker right then and there.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • John Cena was fired? Would have never been able to tell with him wearing his wrestling attire still, cutting promos all over, jumping Nexus members just like he was before the "fired" part happened, security was not getting in the way at all, General Manager not punishing him for his actions, AND HIS THEME MUSIC PLAYING. Even worst is fact that Nexus, who has stood united up until now, instantly caved in from threat after just 1 week of attacks after all they've been through and forced Barrett to give Cena back his job. So, John Cena was fired all for...2 weeks. Emotional farewell promo that gave no break or anything at all.
  • Subverted with Wade Barrett being kicked out of Nexus: Rather than attempt to take revenge against CM Punk and the rest of the stable, he appeared on SmackDown the same week attacking The Big Show for no apparent reason... except that Justin Gabriel and Heath Slater have also jumped ship to SmackDown and realigned themselves with Barrett, who also added Ezekiel Jackson, who introduced himself as a member of Barrett's new stable by scoop-slamming the Big Show.
• Wasted Song: The Corre's theme song, "End of Days," went through numerous reworkings over the group's tenure, before finally settling on the final version that stuck with Wade Barrett for months after the group's split, which was the only version ever officially released by WWE. It took until the summer of 2017 (Over half a decade after the group was last mentioned on WWE television) for the second version of the song to be released in full, and even that was because of a leak rather than WWE actually releasing the song.
• The Woobie: John Cena after being forced to join Nexus.

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