WWE Locker Room Turned On Michael Tarver After Having ‘Relentless’ Heat With John Cena

Former WWE Superstar Michael Tarver was part of The Nexus, which was one of the most dominant groups in the company’s history. Michael Tarver competed as a rookie in the first season of NXT before making his main roster debut in 2010 as a member of the faction.

It seems he had a lot of issues with John Cena. While speaking to Sassy Stephanie on her Talkin’ Sass podcast, Tarver discussed having backstage heat in WWE. Tarver stated that he had heat with John Cena, which was relentless and Tarver didn’t understand why he was targeted.

Tarver added that everyone in the locker room suddenly turned on him.

It [the backstage heat] was never direct, it was never direct. Yeah, so a lot of people would come up to me and would like tell me, ‘Hey, there’s big plans for you. Like there’s a lot of people very impressed with you. Just keep your head up’ because everyone saw that I had heat with one person in particular. Everyone saw it and it was just, it was obvious. Like backstage, it was relentless, relentless — I don’t wanna use the word ‘bullying’ because I’m not a victim but it was just relentless and you know, I stood up for myself. There was times where he would take liberties in the ring so I would give him some knuckles in the ring and I had to defend myself. You know how it is. Somebody takes liberties, you gotta — don’t let ‘em walk all over you.

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Oh everyone knows who it is, you just can’t see him. Yeah, yeah, so it was [John] Cena. I don’t have any heat with Cena now. I make jokes about it but, there was a target on my back. I don’t know why he targeted me but it is what it is but, you know, we ended up on good terms. We ended up on good terms. Yeah, I had to defend myself a lot. But, everyone was high on me and all of a sudden they all turned on me and I’m like why are — people wouldn’t shake my hand, they wouldn’t speak to me. Like all the top guys, I go shake their hands and they would just fade me in front of everybody. I’m like, ‘Oh my God, what did I do?’

Tarver added that legends such as Booker T, Mark Henry, MVP gave him advice when it came to his heat with John Cena. Tarver was released by WWE back in 2011 and hasn’t been seen on WWE television since then. A Nexus reunion was apparently in the works a while ago but it didn’t come to fruition.

h/t to POST Wrestling for the quotes.