Real Reason John Cena Wouldn’t Wear a Nexus Shirt During WWE Storyline Revealed

John Cena’s forced run with The Nexus had fans asking the same question for years—why didn’t he wear the shirt like the rest of the crew? Wade Barrett just dropped the answer, and it’s got nothing to do with loyalty or storytelling. It was all about the money.

Speaking on Inside The Ropes, Barrett pulled back the curtain on WWE’s merch system and why Cena opted to keep wearing his own gear instead of fully committing to the group look. The numbers didn’t lie—Cena wasn’t about to take a pay cut. Barrett explained that standard WWE talent gets a small cut from each shirt sale, and that was no different for Nexus.

“The way wrestling contracts work with WWE is that every shirt that’s sold for a standard wrestler… 5% of that shirt sale goes to me. If a t-shirt costs $20, I get $1 of it.”

But Cena had his own deal, and it wasn’t anywhere near that low. His merch sold like crazy, and WWE made sure to keep him happy.

“Someone like a John Cena… he’s a merch machine… he’s managed to negotiate a higher percentage. I don’t know what his percentage is, but I know it’s not 5%—it’s a lot higher than that.”

That became a problem when Nexus shirts took off. Instead of profiting from his solo gear, Cena would’ve had to split a much smaller pool with the entire group.

“The problem with the Nexus shirts were they were massive sellers, but it wasn’t 5% of every shirt going to me. That 5% was then split seven ways between myself and all the other guys.”

Barrett said Cena wasn’t interested in taking the financial hit.

“For John to have joined Nexus, he would then have had to cut his profits from Nexus shirt sales, which he would have then been incorporated into with seven other guys. So, he didn’t want to do it from his perspective.”

The kicker? Barrett never heard this from Cena himself—but it was the word going around the locker room at the time.

“I never got that story from John. That came from other people. But that was my understanding of why John would never put the shirt on. Eventually he put it on for I think one show—and that was it.”

For fans who felt like Cena never really “joined” Nexus despite the storyline, Barrett just connected the dots. It wasn’t about pride. It wasn’t about character. It was about keeping the merch checks coming in.

Do you think Cena made the right call sticking with his own gear, or should he have gone all in with Nexus? Drop your take in the comments—we want to hear your side of the story.

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