Bigger letdown: The Nexus or Summer of Punk '11

[Mr. Tambourine Man]

Nexus
There may have only been one winner of NXT season one, but that wasn’t going to stop the entire cast from forcing themselves into the company. With an invasion the likes of which we’d arguably never seen before Nexus made their mark in one night. Whether it had been a good guy, bad guy, staff member, no one was safe from the havoc of Nexus. These guys were young, hungry, and strong. Even the WWE's #1 monster heel at the time -Sheamus - ran in terror when approached by them. Then the big showdown came, WWE vs. Nexus at Summerslam....Nexus lost a TEAM VS. TEAM match in essence proving they weren't that hot of a unit after all. From that point all the Nexus guys except for Wade Barrett were made out to look like jobbers. A glimmer of hope came in the form of a Cena vs. Barrett match with the stipulation being that Cena had to join Nexus if he lost the match. This was the perfect opportunity to bring some legitimacy to Nexus with the number one babyface in the company turning bad by force and helping them dominate. Unfortunately, Cena was unwilling from day one to act in the best interest of Nexus and single-handedly disbanded the group before they broke off into New Nexus on RAW and The Corre on Smackdown. Today only two of the original Nexus members are experiencing any level of success (Bryan and Barrett) but the success is quite minimal.


Summer of Punk 2011
No one will ever forget the shoot heard around the world. Punk was sick and tired of being overlooked despite being the best in the company and he was going to stick to the corporate bully Vince McMahon by beating his poster boy John Cena for the WWE Championship and riding off into the sunset with the belt. All this in the midst of the Money in the Bank briefcase matches and a change in power with HHH taking over for Vince. A person who'd only watched WWE for even just that month could write the next year's worth of storylines based off the Money in the Bank PPV no problem. Unfortunately CM Punk was rushed back on TV after winning the title at MITB pretty much killing his entire storyline of being fed up with the WWE the month prior and we never got any satisfying resolution to any of the original conflicts. CM Punk lost the belt, though he has since regained it.

So which of these two promising angles disappointed you more? I’m not asking which was better during the first chapter. I’m wondering which blew all that potential they had harder.

[Ramon's Razor]

To me, Summer of Punk is clearly the biggest letdown. Almost immediately, the thing was highjacked by Kevin Nash and Triple H (which unsurprisingly led to a lot of nothingness itself). Then Punk's momentum is undercut by John Cena getting the title back two weeks later. Punk wins the WWE title! Oh, John Cena just has another one... Boooo. That was just another pin in the balloon. The Summer of Punk felt special when it started but within a month, the whole thing just fell back into the same old, same old. Punk just kept bouncing from one opponent to another instead of feuding with John Cena and John Laurinaitis the whole time like he should have been. And I kept waiting for Johnny Ace to comeback at CM Punk, when Punk was making fun of his career, and say "Punk, you've only been in one 5-Star match. When you've been in two like me, you can talk trash about wrestling careers."

I never had any faith in the Nexus really, so that wasn't a letdown.

[Darth Shizzel]

Both were hit by the combination of Cena hogging the spotlight and of course triple H completely killed Punks momentum and since then Punk has faced a string of main event jobbers.

[Maximo]

We could do a "Biggest Letdown mini Tournament" sometime.

New Blood
WCW/ECW Invasion
NWO in the WWE
ECW as a brand
Nexus
CM Punk in 2011
Wrestlemania World Title, 18 seconds match.

And I've ran out of ideas already.

[Turley]

Both were hit by the combination of Cena hogging the spotlight

I get what you are saying but it is a bit harsh on Cena. To say he hogs the spotlight makes it seem like he books the show. I think it's more a case of him being forced down our throats rather than him personally hogging the spotlight.

To answer the poll, I think the SUmmer of Punk is a bigger let down because I had much higher hopes for it than I did with the Nexus storyline.

[thethirdwarren]

This one is a hard one for me. Both, when happening live, gave the impression that things were about to change. Like major overhauls to the programming in general, making it seems like more edgy programming was on it's way. The Nexus angels, as it happened, was confusing and awesome and intriguing and many other words. Both severely let everyone down.

I think I have to go with the Punk angle on this one as well. The Punk angle went on a little longer in the right direction, until going against Triple H and then becoming a face. With the Nexus angle we pretty much knew it was over during the week after Nexus showed up with them getting rid of Bryan for the tie choking incident. After seeing that, I know most of us here, or at least the more knowledgeable ones, knew it was over before it really started. With Punk, it got your hopes higher and higher, just to eventually let you down. And slow disappointment is worse than instant disappointment to me.

[Jericho]

Summer of Punk for me, I could tell how redundant the nexus were gonna be by the second week in.