Former WWE star David Otunga spoke with Muscle Man Malcolm on the show Muscle Memory, discussing various topics, including the debut of The Nexus in 2010.
They made their entrance by invading an episode of RAW in June of that year, where they attacked 17-time World Champion John Cena. Otunga shared that they had no idea at the time that this debut would become one of the most impactful in wrestling history.
Otunga said, “Well, first of all, that was the furthest thing from our mind. We had no idea how impactful this was going to be. In fact, we were pretty sure we were getting fired that day. And even then when we did it, they told us if this doesn’t go like we wanted, if this doesn’t look like Vince wants it, you all are fired. So we were nervous even after we came in the back. Like we were nervous like, hey, was that good enough? But we came back to a standing ovation. So figured we’d at least have another week, another week’s run of this. But yeah, like honestly because we were in NXT and guys were getting voted off and the whole premise of the show was whoever wins that gets a WWE contract and then that’s it. For the rest of the guys, you’re either back to developmental or fired because then you’ve now had your shot to make the main roster and you didn’t. So, we were we were all pretty nervous.”
On how the Nexus were informed about their WWE RAW invasion:
“They called all of us to TV that day and so we knew there was something up if they got all of us here. And it was weird because nobody would talk to us the whole day. We didn’t know what we were doing, why we were there, if this was a rib. And then it might have been like 30 minutes before the show, maybe less. And they called us into Vince’s office. And it was just Vince and Michael Hayes. And they pulled out these armbands and gave them to us and told us what they wanted us to do. Vince described it as we should look like wild animals or like a pack of dogs and just tearing everything up. That’s what he said. Wreak havoc. Destroy destroy the ring. They’re going to have box cutters for us, you know, tools, whatever, but tear the place up, leave nobody standing, and that’s what we did.”
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(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
