Posted on 11/19/125 by Colin Vassallo
David Otunga sat down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast
Creative Studio in Hollywood, California to discuss his
journey from NXT Season 1 to the main roster, the Nexus’
shock debut on Raw, whether John Cena winning at SummerSlam
buried the group, winning the Tag Titles with Cena, how the
coffee cup became a part of his character, getting to
wrestle Bret Hart, the transition to announcing, what he is
doing now, and more!
On whether he considers himself to be retired:
“No, I just consider myself as having not wrestled in a long
time.”
On when he knew it was time to step away:
“It wasn’t necessarily my last match. That’s the thing, in
my mind, I’ve never had my last match. It’s just where I was
in the company and becoming an announcer and doing all that,
they didn’t really want me doing in-ring stuff. You actually
get a different contract where you are on an announcer’s
contract instead of a talent one. So it just was they
weren’t even thinking about me, booking me creatively,
although I did pitch some ideas, and was gonna have my own
stable. I wanted to, got a little bit of traction.”
Who was gonna be in your stable?
“Well, I don’t know. I pitched something, I don’t know if I
called it The Firm or what it was, but it was kind of what
The Hurt Syndicate ended up becoming. But it was before
that, so it was three years before that. I don’t know when
they came out. It might even been longer, because it was
2019, this is before COVID, at least. But anyway, I was
going to be the leader of that as a heel lawyer. And, yeah,
they liked it, but it obviously didn’t [happen], they liked
me better as an announcer.”
Do you think John Cena buried The Nexus?
“Oh yeah, that’s 100% accurate. I mean, that’s what
happened, that is what happened.”
Is it because Cena wanted to go over in that match?
“Yes. And I don’t know why he wanted to go over, but we knew
all day we were supposed to go over, and then things started
getting weird, and then they tell us, no, the finish
changed, and it’s because John wanted to go over, and we
weren’t happy about that. The other guys in the match
weren’t happy about that. If I’m being honest, I think John
probably knows that wasn’t the right idea. I mean, maybe
obviously, at the time, he thought that was the right call,
but in retrospect, I don’t even think he would agree that
that was the right thing to do.”
So what was the finish supposed to be?
“I know we were supposed to go over. I don’t know how. I
don’t know how many of us there were [supposed to be left in
the match], but there were some shenanigans [planned] and
ultimately, we went over.”
For those that don’t know, Cena takes a DDT on the concrete,
it’s 2 on 1, and he still wins:
“But either way, you spend six months or however long it was
building this faction, and we’re the strongest thing, we’re
the hottest thing they have. Then now, why would you have us
lose that? This is the main event. To really build these new
stars, you want us to keep going. We could have rode this
all the way to Mania, but then after that, we’ve now lost
and that took us down a few pegs. After that, we never
regained the steam. They ended up separating us. Even then,
they started to have a good storyline going where we were
gonna oust Wade Barrett, and I was gonna take over. I
remember, I kicked him out of the group. I think it was Raw,
and then the next week, I was supposed to then become the
leader. However, then it’s hey, surprise guys, we got a new
leader for you, CM Punk. Wait, what? How does this fit in?
And I guess he needed a faction. Straight Edge Society was
done and he needed a new faction. So I don’t know why they
decided just to give him Nexus. So then the storyline that
we had going just stopped, and now we’re The New Nexus with
CM Punk, which, eh. It never really took off, I think,
because it was a disconnect for the fans too.”
On sharing the ring with Bret Hart:
“That was awesome. Just to share the ring with him, and
getting to talk [to him]. Bret is one of my favorite people
in WWE, period, in all of professional wrestling. So just
getting to talk to him, getting to know him, that was
awesome. He’s so humble and so knowledgeable, and then being
able to share the ring with him, it was awesome, but it was
nerve-wracking a little bit because we didn’t want to hurt
him. We know that he’d had some injuries and some health
problems before. So we were very, very careful with him. But
it was awesome.”