Plans can always change in WWE and that is apparently what happened with the NEXUS stable. The faction had their time in WWE and a few of their members went on to better things, but plans for their original leader were apparently scrapped along the way.

During his MC! True Long Island Story podcast, Matt Cardona revealed that WWE had plans for Zack Ryder to become the NEXUS’ leader. Those intentions were nixed along the way and we got the stable everyone knows today. It would have still been very interesting to watch come together.

“Something happens with, you know, I don’t know if they’re the NEXUS, or the New Nexus or whatever Nexus they were, it was Otunga, Michael McGillicutty/Curtis Axel. Well, I come out after they wrestle and my music plays. I just say ‘Woo, woo, woo. You know it.’ And that’s it Nothing happens the next week. They don’t tell me, I’m not asking questions. To me, it’s like, ‘Alright, I get to come out on stage. I get to be on RAW.'”

“I later find out, like years later. I found like the script, essentially, like the first draft, I don’t know if it’s supposed to be this RAW or the next RAW, but where like I become the new leader of the NEXUS. But no one ever said that to me before, like while that was all going down. Like no one said, ‘Okay, and then next week you’re gonna form the new.'”

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“I think it was gonna be the ‘Woo, Woo, Woo Nexus’ or something like that,” Cardona said. “But no one ever told me like this was a plan until years later. I found out because someone, an ex-WWE writer like held onto the script. So if anyone’s listening to this and has that script—now that I think about it, I don’t know if I was ever given the script, maybe just told about it. So I would love to read the script and literally read it out loud on the show. So if anybody has that, I would love to figure out what the deal [was], because nobody at the time explained it to me.”

We’ll never know how things would have turned out if Zack Ryder would have been placed with the NEXUS stable. It might have sent everyone involved into a different direction. Ryder could have even seen himself travel to a different tier on the WWE roster, but that didn’t happen. If anything, now we know about another interesting plan that hit the cutting room floor to join countless other ideas that never saw the light of day.

What’s your take on this story? Sound off in the comments!

Felix Upton

Felix Upton is a seasoned writer with over 30 years of experience. He began his career writing advertisements for local newspapers in New York before transitioning to publishing news for Ringside News. His expertise includes writing, editing, research, photo editing, and video editing. In his free time, he enjoys bungee jumping and learning extinct languages.

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