Appearing on TMZ Inside The Ring, David Otunga revealed that the original plan for The New Nexus faction was for him to be the leader before plans were abruptly changed to insert CM Punk into the role instead.
“I told Wade Barrett on Raw, ‘You’re out, we voted you out,’ basically. And now, going into that, I was going to take over the Nexus. Everybody was excited,” Otunga explained. “Literally, the next week, CM Punk comes out, and he’s our leader now. And so we’re like, ‘Wait, what? Why did we even have this storyline?’”
Otunga shared what he heard was the reason for the sudden pivot. “From what I heard, Punk needed a new faction. I forget what his group was before with Gallows… he needed a new kind of thing like that, he was coming back, and so they gave him Nexus,” he said. “Initially, it was supposed to be my group, but he was like, ‘Oh, alright.’ And that’s why, at first, he didn’t even seem like he was really into it. It didn’t last all that long.”
Otunga also shared a funny story from that era, recalling how Punk’s infamous “pipebomb” promo was so convincing that it completely fooled him and his partner. “The night he did the pipe bomb promo, McGillicuddy and I, we’d been riding with him. He worked us,” Otunga remembered. “When he came back through the curtains, I legit went out to him. I was like, ‘Hey Punk, if I don’t see you again, it’s been real.’ And he laughed… he’s like, ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ But he worked us. I thought he legit was getting fired.”
CM Punk became the leader of The New Nexus in December 2010 after the group ousted original leader Wade Barrett. The faction feuded with Randy Orton through WrestleMania 27 before quietly disbanding, adding another layer of chaotic booking to the overall Nexus storyline.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit TMZ Inside The Ring with an h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
