The June 7, 2010 broadcast of Monday Night Raw featured one of the red brand’s most acclaimed moments. Mere days removed from the finale of NXT season one, Wade Barrett – the show’s winning rookie – led his fellow contestants to execute an invasion of WWE, destroying everyone and everything in sight.
Known as The Nexus, the group was perceived as a rebellious faction of outsiders, initially making their entrance through the crowd and having no affiliation with the remainder of the company. Though they got off to a great start, continued losses to the likes of John Cena hampered the group’s progression by the year’s end.
Wade Barrett Reveals The Nexus Was Banned From The Locker Room
Speaking on Ryan Satin’s Out of Character podcast, the five-time WWE Intercontinental Champion recalled how WWE banned them from using the locker room. This was due to wanting the storyline to be taken seriously, despite fans having no clue as to who was and wasn’t in the locker room:
“Genuinely, it was one of the dumbest things that I’ve experienced in my time in WWE. There was a person who was put in charge of us who is no longer with the company who decided that it would be appropriate for a faction of guys who were attacking the company to not be allowed in the locker room, which would absolutely make sense because in terms of Nexus, we were coming out of the crowd, we were perceived as outsiders who hadn’t earned contracts in WWE. So, it kind of made a bit of logical sense.”
Elaborating, Wade Barrett added that it made little sense as to why The Nexus were headlining key events such as SummerSlam, yet they were banned from entering the locker room:
“Why am I main eventing Survivor Series, why are we all main eventing SummerSlam, yet I’m not eligible to step in the locker room here? I’m gonna change in the hallway; dinner ladies and catering staff and cleaners are walking past while I’m putting my gear on. I’m like, ‘This is stupid. There’s no benefit to this. There’s no payoff to this whatsoever’.”
Wade Barrett was ousted from The Nexus by CM Punk by the end of 2010, instead moving to SmackDown and forming The Corre alongside fellow Nexus alum Heath Slater and Justin Gabriel, as well as Ezekiel Jackson.