1. nWo
2. Four Horsemen
3. The Freebirds
4. Hart Foundation
5. DX
6. Heenan Family
7. Dangerous Alliance
8. The Corporation
9. The Triple Threat
10. Nation Of Domination
11. The Ministry Of Darkness
12. The Shield
13. Evolution
14. The First Family (Jimmy Hart's Memphis and WWF stable)
15. Main Event Mafia

The nWo and it's inception is still the most exciting and best executed angle in wrestling history.That first night everything was in sync. Hall just coming through the crowd, Enos and Steve Doll(?) selling disbelief and Tony Schiavone and Larry Zbyszko doing the most overlooked commentary in the business in totally making it seem like a WWF invasion coupled with Hall's promo. Nash joining just added to the anticipation and Hogan turning heel set everything on it's ear. Going into finer detail someone like Bret or Shawn being the third man would make more sense but Hogan was the guy who put the nWo in the next stratosphere. In hindsight I agree with UT that there should have been more of a focus on ex-WWF guys joining initially and not people like the Giant, Bagwell and Norton early on. My fantasy booking would have had Hogan, Hall, Nash, X-Pac, DiBiase, Savage and Hennig (arriving a year early) as the initial group and maybe into mid 1997 then get more WCW names to build the threat to Sting that even his friends were jumping ship.

Yes it got too big and ate up a lot of WCW's focus but it was still massively over even in the aftermath of Starrcade 1997. A lot of my friends were huge Wolfpac fans, Sting and Luger joining was just a bit much for me. Bret joining Hogan on the Hollywood side was even weirder though. It should have ended after the internal split in some sort of War Games match. Also before I forget, credit to X-Pac for trying to get Jericho over as he got the first title off an nWo member. Outside of that it was very one sided but if your going to sell this invasion as a threat 50/50 booking is not the way to go.

The nWo was my no-brainer number one, the only faction to drive a boom and change the way storylines are presented. For younger fans who missed out, just imagine Cody making his way through the crowd on Raw next week...

ECW's Triple Threat was of course Horsemen inspired but had a lot of great moments and matches and their talent level shouldn't be slept on. Douglas, Benoit, Malenko, Bam Bam, Candido and Storm at various times had all the right aesthetics. Their feud with Taz especially was just classic stuff and did a great job at building anticipation of Taz finally getting his hands on "The Franchise."

The Ministry made my list for being a big player in the Attitude Era and having some pretty outrageous moments with kidnappings and sacrifices. Plus it gave the Undertaker and The Brood some of the coolest entrances in the business.

The First Family covered 3 companies and reads like a who's who for membership and includes Andy Kaufman and his infamous antics on Letterman. They also got a bit of rub in the main event scene with Hogan in the WWF. I almost forgot about them myself but I thought they deserved recognition as a bit of a forgotten old school stable.

Main Event Mafia was pretty cool in TNA. I liked the concept and as the name suggests stars galore. Plus it was the first time Sting was an effective heel.

Russo did come in after most of the damage had been done, but he's got his hands all over most of WCW 2000. He wrote himself into an angle that made him World Champion, and then that whole stupid shoot with Hogan at Bash at the Beach was all him too.

I mean I guess he gets points for thinking outside the box, but his ideas were horrible and never should have seen the light of day. They never should have re-hired him though so you could also point the finger at management there.

Oh I’m not saying he was remotely good , he was terrible and deserves all the criticism in the world.

To go back to my analogy though - are we going to charge the doctor with murder because he couldn’t bring the corpse back to life? Yes voodoo was a terrible idea to try and bring someone back but it’s not what killed him.

Damn, I should have really rubbed it in and replaced The Shield with bWo, nice shout jTjohncenaGOAT. Demolition is an interesting one too but they were quickly on the downturn once LOD showed up. If Bill Eadie had been healthy and the booking was tweaked that would have been a great feud with LOD and Warrior.

The Wolfpac tend to get ignored in lists like this because they just get gobbled up under the nWo banner. I understand why, but both nWo Hollywood and nWo Wolfpac were really their own factions and distinct from the united nWo. The Wolfpac were as over as faces in 1998 as DX were, but because the nWo recombined in early 1999 and then WCW soon fell off a cliff, before eventually going out of business, they feel a bit forgotten.





Also of note in regards to the scope of the nWo is that you also had the nWo Japan offshoot in NJPW from late 96 through to the 2000 Jan 4 Tokyo Dome Show. They included Chono, Muta, Tenzan and Kojima at different points and had multiple IWGP Heavyweight and Tag Title reigns. The nWo Sting (the non-yip Jeff Farmer) got himself a good 5-year run with New Japan out of that.

I had the NWO at #2 for changing the game. Guys jumped promotions all the time. None were ever more impactful than Razor & Diesel defecting from WWF to WCW. That whole "he doesn't work here!" thing? The NWO made it famous. We already discussed how Hogan's heel turn is the gold standard in a previous countdown. No turn before ever matched the impact of Hogan going bad guy and no turn ever will. The business has changed too much. The NWO even did the one thing the Horsemen failed to do by making WCW the #1 wrestling company in the US.

The first few months were brilliant. Hall shows up unannounced, declares war. Nash follows soon after. Now I never once bought into it as a shoot. I had heard the rumors of Razor & Diesel leaving WWF for months. IYH April 1996 and the Razor & Diesel-free aftermath confirmed it. But it was still interesting as a wrestling angle. The 3rd man hype was off the charts. Greatest mystery angle ever, probably. And unlike most mystery angles, this one had an epic payoff where the ultimate babyface, Hulk Hogan, shocked the world by going bad guy. Bonus points to the stellar commentary and hostile crowd. That segment is just a total package of wrestling greatness. Wrestling had been gaining momentum for a while. I'll argue that point til I'm blue in the face. But this greatly accelerated the process. Wrestling was starting to become cool again. Long before classrooms across America were filled with Austin 3:16 shirts, they were chock full of the suspiciously similar NWO tee.

I give WCW & Bischoff a lot of flack. Some of it is sincere but a lot of it is honestly a gimmick at this point. But I can't even pretend they didn't initially knock it out of the park with the NWO concept. Even something like Nash powerbombing Bischoff at GAB 96 was huge. Before 1996 you never saw authority figures get attacked. First Vader in WWF. Now this in WCW. It was a really big deal. That Nitro UT mentioned with guys getting beat up backstage and Rey getting lawn darted was a great show that had my friends and I glued to the tv. The black & white empty arena segments on Saturday Night were another nice innovative touch that has been mostly forgotten. Even little stuff like the "Promotional consideration paid for by the New World Order" segments added a touch of realism to the proceedings. The folks in charge clearly put a lot of thought into this stuff. It was different, unique, innovative.

For those first few months the NWO had white hot nuclear heat with me. Razor & Diesel were already among my least favorite wrestlers in WWF and now I hated them (in the good way) for "selling out." I had always loathed the Hulkster and now he was worse than ever as the ultimate bad guy. The weird thing is I was becoming increasingly anti-WCW due to the Monday Night War. Yet they were the good guys in their war against the NWO! Getting me to view the Evil Empire as the babyfaces required some next level heeling, and that's exactly what the NWO delivered.

Unfortunately it would soon transform into go away heat when Hogan won the belt from my man The Giant and survived Flair a few days later. It was no longer fun. And I swore off WCW for-ev-er.

I'm mostly with UT & jTjohncenaGOAT in not liking a ton of the other stuff (that I've seen), though there were still some good things to come. War Games '96 is super underrated and highly recommended, for example. Bischoff turning heel was another OMG moment and that angle where he gave the WCW wrestlers what amounted to a "join or die" ultimatum was good stuff. I do wish they had kept more to the original WWF Invasion storyline though. The whole thing got far too muddled. One or two defectors would have worked. Bagwell is actually an ideal Benedict Arnold candidate since he was a longtime midcarder who played by the rules and had little to show for it. It makes sense that somebody in that role would sell out. They also diluted it by bringing in a bunch of ham & eggers to the point where it quickly degenerated into parody. Souled Out was another innovative concept that just happened to fail. Oh well. It was worth a try. NWO Japan was another neat idea. The faction that changed wrestling is now attempting to takeover two promotions.

Even though I had long been checked out, the feud with Sting, Luger & Goldberg winning the title, the rise of DDP, and a bunch of other NWO-related stuff was huge to normal people. 

Starrcade 1997 should have been the NWO's last stand. I don't think that is a controversial take. That should have been the night WCW took their promotion back by sweeping the NWO in all the big matches. The NWO had run roughshod for 18 months. It was time to return the favor. Then you could have had the big NWO split, which they could easily have milked for a year. Alas, there were too many chiefs, not enough indians, and the whole thing turned into a disappointing mess.

All the reboots and the WWF version obviously sucked, but you could honestly say the same thing about some of the Horsemen reboots. They definitely milked it for way too long. There's a reason the _WO became probably the most parodied thing in wrestling history.

So even though I wasn't a fan, the NWO unquestionably changed the game, and ya gotta respect that.  

*Be back later to post my list and comment on Shootist's Horsemen post.

The NWO was my #2 right behind The Four Horseman. No other faction ever made the kind of impact the did, especially the original 3 of Hall, Nash and Hogan.   Very deserving of the #1 spot.

15.King Booker's Court
14.Triple Threat
13.The Wyatt Family
12.LAX
11.The Corporation
10.The Dangerous Alliance
9.The Fabulous Freebirds
8.Evolution
7.The Shield
6.The Ministry of Darkness
5.The Hart Foundation
4.Degeneration X
3. The Heenan Family
2. The NWO
1.The Four Horseman


I included King Booker's Court mainly because King Booker was a major guilty pleasure of mine, much to my wife's chagrin.

1. Four Horsemen (#2)
2. NWO (#1)
3. DX (#4)
4. Hart Foundation (#3)
5. Evolution (#7)
6. Dangerous Alliance (#8)
7. The Shield (#5)
8. Bullet Club (#9)
9. Fabulous Freebirds (#6)
10. The Nation (#12)
11. Camp Cornette
12. Generation Next
13. Triple Threat
14. Varsity Club
15. The Embassy

I loved Camp Cornette. They're vying with The Dangerous Alliance for the #3 spot when it comes to my all time favorite stables. Owen, Vader, Bulldog, Yoko, Cornette. Just look at those names! That's a mid 90s Baker all star team. They were involved in a bunch of memorable (at least to me) angles & matches. They were also super important to that era in WWF history as basically a rotating trio of lead heels. Camp Cornette quietly main evented 7 out of 12 pay per views in 95-96 while opposing top babyface Shawn Michaels on 8 out of 10 pay per views. They were so much fun.

Generation Next was a ballsy move that paid off big time for ROH. They took 4 guys, 2.5 of which were unknowns, and pushed them to the moon. Voila! 4 new stars are born. I've even seen people say ROH would have died if GenNext flopped. I think that's an exaggeration, but it definitely would have derailed their midcard for quite some time. There was also some cool intra-stable storytelling with Austin Aries breaking out as the big star rather than the leader Alex Shelley. Had great moments, matches, feuds, and cohesion. In GenNext 1.0 every member filled a distinct role- Shelley: The Leader, Aries: The Ace, Evans: The Flyer, Strong: The Muscle. They didn't lose a step when Sydal came in either. I think The Shield would be the best comparison for those people not familiar with this fabulous faction.

I wanted some ECW representation on my list. Initially I was going with The Flock for having success in both WCW & ECW before ultimately settling on The Triple Threat due to the RVD/Sabu/Taz New Triple Threat boost. Hey, they were technically a Triple Threat. The "real" Triple Threat was also important as the title hogging lead heel stable for basically two straight years, though I was decidedly not a fan. 

Remember how I said I was indifferent to the 80s Horsemen in real time? Well, why wouldn't I be when The Varsity Club was right there? Kevin Sullivan's army of jerk jocks ruled. They held some gold, had a great aesthetic, and created a breakout star in Rick Steiner. "Dr. Death didn't flop because he got knocked out by Bart Gunn. Dr. Death flopped because stupid WWF didn't give him a Varsity Club!"- 1999 Me. Probably the most underrated stable ever. Unless it's....

The Embassy is my favorite thing ROH ever did. It really shouldn't have worked. What do a wealthy African prince, a shunned wrestling prodigy, a monster, and a wrestling troll have in common? Absolutely nothing. Yet somehow this odd mishmash of personalities just worked. They had great chemistry and crammed a ton of goodness into a short period of time. Prince Nana is the greatest manager of the 2000s. Jimmy Rave was gold as The Crown Jewel. He had great feuds with Punk, AJ & GenNext in one calendar year. That's some Ric Flair-level work right there. Shelley's character arc was brilliant. He tried to be a good guy, got shunned by the locker room for his previous dastardly deeds, so he embraced the hate by joining The Embassy and doubling down on the dickishness. Abyss was never better than when throwing around guys half his size during his Embassy run. Embassy 4 Life. 
-------------------------------------------------
*My list was based on greatness only. For strictly a Favorites List....

1 & 2- Horsemen & Hart Foundation flip flop
3 & 4- Dangerous Alliance & Camp Cornette flip flop
5. The Embassy
6. Varsity Club
7. Foreign Fanatics*
8. New Triple Threat*
9. BWO
10. Either Generation Next or Evolution

*Yeah, these two are stretching it. They were both only around for like a month to sell one pay per view. But greatness is greatness. Both factions ruuuuuuled. It's my list and I'm sticking to it.

I really wanted to squeeze the BWO on the bottom of my list but I just couldn't make it work. GOAT comedy stable. They had the right gimmick at the right time. About as over as any babyface stable has ever been from a per capita standpoint. Stevie's character arc had the potential to be the greatest in ECW history, and one of the greatest of all time, had he not ruined it for himself. A shame. It pleases me to see a few of you guys voted for my favorite _WO.

#10 is a respect more than love thing. Truth is I just don't like all that many stables. Managers & Stables are the two things I used to think I loved until I did the work one day and realized I actually don't like most of them all that much.

Jun 5, 2019 7:13:31 GMT Shootist said:

Jun 5, 2019 5:20:19 GMT Baker said:

Barry joining was an even better fit considering his history with Flair and undeniable talent level. Plus they got a great parking lot beatdown of Lex in which reinforced how dangerous they were. Barry feuding with Dusty was great too as Dusty was wiling to bleed buckets to sell that claw hold.

Benoit seemed the odd man out for me. As much of a fan I was of him he just didn't have the star power behind him I thought to make it work. By Great American Bash 1996 he proved his worth feuding with Kevin Sullivan. Pillman's antics didn't stand out as much to me as the quieter other ex-Stampede guy did initially.

You did a good job of pointing out how dangerous the Horsemen were in their first few incarnations. They were basically a gang of violent, badass thugs. I think the later versions lost a lot of that edge. 

Barry really was the perfect guy to turn at that time. The Horsemen were down. They had just lost Lex. Then BAM! They hit NWA right where it hurts by convincing longtime good guy Barry Windham to join the group. Suddenly the Horsemen are instantly on top of the NWA Universe once again. With the way that angle played out the turn also made sense from Barry's perspective. Lex wasn't there when Barry needed him. #BarryWindhamWasRight

Also, the Barry/Dusty match at Great American Bash 88(?) that's like 60% Dusty trapped in the Clawhold rules.

I actually agree with you about Benoit. While he did quickly win me over as a wrestler, and I accepted him as a Horseman, he was very much an afterthought in the group. Flair, Arn & Pillman appeared together far more often and were embroiled in the same main event storylines. While Benoit was just off in the midcard doing his own thing. He rarely showed up with the others outside of a few Worldwide and maybe Saturday Night tags mostly with Pillman. I don't think he truly earned his Horsemen stripes until the Sullivan match at Great American Bash. Until then he was more of a junior Horseman....or a Horseman in training, if you wheel.

Another thing I forgot to mention in my long post was how the Horsemen had stellar cohesion. Every Horsemen unit had the same goals....

1. Do whatever it takes to ensure Ric Flair is the NWA/WCW Champion.
2. Win all the other belts.
3. Party while doing so.

And they succeeded more often than not.

1. IV Horsemen
2. nWo
3. Fabulous Freebirds
4. The Hart Foundation
5. Corporation
6. Raven's Nest
7. The New Day
8. The Dudleys
9. The Wyatt Family
10. The Straight Edge Society
11. The Shield
12. Triple Threat
13. D-Generation X
14. The Heenan Family
15. Latino World Order

IV Horsemen - As much as I wanted to vote The New Day as my #1, I had to pay tribute to the Horsemen. I've been watching a lot of 98 Nitro recently and my favourite storyline is the return of Ric Flair and the IV Horsemen. The way they built that up with Malenko and McMichael begging for Arn to restart the Horsemen, to Arn rejecting them, to Dean trying to avenge WarGames 97 by taking down Curt Hennig to Double A having Dean's back and then the eventual return segment in September 14th was tremendous television. I was also stupified by that match the Big Evil recommended with Benoit/McMichael taking on Jarrett/Guerrero from Nitro 97. The crowd is molten hot and the action is just so damn smooth and enjoyable.

nWo -I actually agree with most of your summary UT . The formation of the nWo was ground-breaking television and it's well worth rewatching. I really appreciate the finer details of the nWo brand like the theme music, the graffiti motif and the post-modern MTV style backstage segments. It gave the group their edge and made them just that more interesting.

I think they cop too much for WCW's demise. I know that popular opinion suggests the angle should have ended at Starrcade 97 and while I can see the artistic merit behind the decision, from a business stand-point, the nWo helped WCW achieve it's most successful financial year in 1998. In fact, WCW continued to enjoy success well into 1999 until injuries struck, decimating the roster and throwing the product into a slump they couldn't recover from.

The issue with the nWo, like everything else on the show is that it became unfocused and boring. There were obvious directions the group could have taken, but they kept getting distracted. Whether it was taking over the NBA, taking over NBC, settling an old score with the Warrior or taking over the White House they just never gave the fans anything to look forward to.

As far as strange membership choices, while I understood his utility, having Randy Savage join made no sense for his character. The nWo used his ex-wife to emotionally abuse Randy Savage, they constantly beat him down in these ruthless attacks and embarrassed him on live PPV, only for him to turn around and swerve on everyone? They were never able to make sense of it. From a booking decision, it got us to DDP-Savage which was one of the better feuds of the Nitro era, but that killed one of their biggest stars for me.

I'm conflicted over The Giant joining. On one hand, you're right that it prevented him from being marketed as the face of WCW and a potential superstar for the company. On the other, the nWo were tearing through every babyface around that time, so he'd be protected by being a part of the nWo. Supposedly The Giant was the back-up plan and originally the British Bulldog was supposed to join. Between the two, I'd much rather take The Giant. For starters, he was a stand-in for Andre The Giant and a 'Hogan' guy. Second, British people don't belong in the nWo, period.

The Fabulous Freebirds - I love that Star Wars 1982 angle where the Freebirds start off by trying to take care of the Von Erichs on the biggest stage, only for there to be this big misunderstanding leading to months of heated showdowns. They were pioneers that are still copied to this day and if you watch their six men tags you can see where The Shield and Evolution got their ideas from.

One thing I forgot to mention in my nWo rewatches on the collection is coming across their "nWo" Saturday Night" segments. They were really hit or miss but man when they hit they were quite hysterical. I never even remember these existing.

Jun 7, 2019 18:14:40 GMT UT said:

One thing I forgot to mention in my nWo rewatches on the collection is coming across their "nWo" Saturday Night" segments. They were really hit or miss but man when they hit they were quite hysterical. I never even remember these existing.

Hell yeah.   Hall and Nash calling their own matches was hilarious.

Jun 7, 2019 18:09:59 GMT Big Pete said:

As far as strange membership choices, while I understood his utility, having Randy Savage join made no sense for his character. The nWo used his ex-wife to emotionally abuse Randy Savage, they constantly beat him down in these ruthless attacks and embarrassed him on live PPV, only for him to turn around and swerve on everyone? They were never able to make sense of it. From a booking decision, it got us to DDP-Savage which was one of the better feuds of the Nitro era, but that killed one of their biggest stars for me.

I always assumed the idea was that Savage joined so that he could be with Elizabeth. He would swallow his pride and join this pack of dogs that he hated to be in a position to protect the thing he cared about the most. And once you've made that decision, you might as well go all the way with it. I wasn't watching in real time, so I don't know if that's how it was presented on TV.

Jun 7, 2019 18:09:59 GMT Big Pete said:

I'm conflicted over The Giant joining. On one hand, you're right that it prevented him from being marketed as the face of WCW and a potential superstar for the company. On the other, the nWo were tearing through every babyface around that time, so he'd be protected by being a part of the nWo. Supposedly The Giant was the back-up plan and originally the British Bulldog was supposed to join. Between the two, I'd much rather take The Giant. For starters, he was a stand-in for Andre The Giant and a 'Hogan' guy. Second, British people don't belong in the nWo, period.

I like the idea of having someone jump relatively soon in the run. It creates that drama and intrigue - can anyone be trusted? And The Giant works in terms of the nWo wanting to get the biggest possible threat on their side and him seeing their power (taking his title from him) first hand and deciding its better to be with them than against them.

I always assumed the idea was that Savage joined so that he could be with Elizabeth. He would swallow his pride and join this pack of dogs that he hated to be in a position to protect the thing he cared about the most. And once you've made that decision, you might as well go all the way with it. I wasn't watching in real time, so I don't know if that's how it was presented on TV.

I had to go back through the Observers and it turns out your memory is still better than mine.

This is a segment on the post-Superbrawl 97 edition of Nitro.

As much as a mess as the Halloween Havoc 1996 match was, WCW were careful with the way they portrayed Miss Elizabeth. Despite going along with the nWo's plan to emotionally abuse Savage, it was never about spite for her character and it was just a way of making ends meet. When the match took place, Elizabeth protected Savage on multiple occassions so the onscreen reunion was inevitable.

So I take that back. While I wasn't a fan of Savage being humbled by Hogan and becoming his lackey after promising to kill him at Halloween Havoc it wasn't entirely illogical.

I'll default to Stevie Ray. Stevie was never supposed to be in the nWo, his spot was originally intended for Jericho who rejected it because he wanted to do more than stand in the background of every Hogan promo. WCW went through with the storyline regardless, having The Giant interfere on Jericho's behalf until a September edition of Saturday Night where The Giant laid Jericho out in Chris' match against Stevie Ray. On the following Nitro, Stevie Ray subbed in for his brother's US Championship shot opportunity only to be offered a spot in the nWo, which he took.

Stevie then spent the bulk of September and October doing jobs to all the stars on Thunder, Saturday Night and Fall Brawl.

The question is, from a storyline perspective, what did Stevie Ray add to the stable? It would have made all the sense in the world to bring Stevie in to try and lure Booker T, the hottest rising star in the company at the time, but Booker was off until November and they wouldn't do a Booker/Stevie program until January of 2000. In the end he became like one of those guys like Vincent, Horace and Brian Adams who diluted the stable and took up television time they didn't deserve.

Jun 23, 2019 16:39:19 GMT Big Pete said:

While I wasn't a fan of Savage being humbled by Hogan and becoming his lackey after promising to kill him at Halloween Havoc it wasn't entirely illogical.

Yeah, that is understandable. I'd imagine many watching at the time were upset with Savage again being made into a Hulk underling.