Top 5 Worst Wrestling Stables

In this edition of The Wrestling Estate roundtable, we present our top five worst wrestling stables.

David Gibb’s Top 5 Worst Wrestling Stables

The World Elite

“Everybody has a team! What do we do with all our singles midcard wrestlers? Make them into a team!” Tons of good talent in there. Just a lazy idea during a time when TNA desperately needed a good one.

The Oddities

The worst part of The Oddities in 2020 is the brutal generic music dubbed over “The Greatest Show” on the WWE Network. The worst part of The Oddities in the late 1990s was their existence. Plenty of talent you could’ve done something with in there, but the run basically doomed everybody involved.

Right to Censor

Like every other group on my list, this was a great collection of talent (in fact, this talent in a different presentation could’ve been something bigger with the right rub against a main event star), but fighting a subtextual war against the decency police by caricaturing them was not a good use of the audience’s time.

Sports Entertainment Xtreme

Get it?! Unfiltered Vince Russo at his Russoiest.

Dudes With Attitudes

Putting your top heels together into an unstoppable gang has, historically, worked. Putting your babyfaces into an unstoppable gang has, historically, not. This wasn’t really a stable as much as a temporary alliance, but it makes my list because the name is the most ‘90s bad thing ever and you can’t convince me Paul Orndorff and El Gigante had anything in common other than they both worked for WCW in 1990.

Juan Bautista’s Top 5 Worst Wrestling Stables

Fortune

It was a 99-cent store version of the Main Event Mafia. They didn’t really develop an identity. The group was managed by Ric Flair and had plenty of talent, but it was still terrible. Kaz and AJ Styles were better off. Funniest of all, the group was disbanded for quite some time before it was acknowledged on TV.

The Corre

One of the first groups to rise from the ashes of the original Nexus: Wade Barrett, Justin Gabriel and our boy Heath Slater. The three by themselves probably could’ve pulled off the group, but they were joined by the project known as Ezekiel Jackson. The group never really took off and before we knew it, The Corre was no more.

Absolution

On paper, this should’ve been great. A returning Paige who felt kicked to the curb was going to take Sonya Deville and Mandy Rose under her wing. This was going to be their breakout performance as Paige returned to her rightful place in a stacked championship scene. Unfortunately, neck injuries caught up with Paige and the group didn’t really have enough time to make an impact. While some think The Riott Squad should be in this slot, fans have rallied around Liv Morgan and now Ruby Riott.

The Shield 2.0

Now the first run of The Shield was great and ended when it should have. The initial Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose feud was good and that Hell in a Cell match probably should have ended with Bray Wyatt interference because that suited Rollins’ character. After this, I was annoyed because they started pushing The Shield triple threat and that peaked at Money in the Bank 2016. The reunion produced a great moment, but that was it. They weren’t in the same attire and they had all taken different paths in the years since.

Legacy

It was going to be a group of four second- or third-generation wrestlers, but only three made the cut. Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton continue to have fruitful careers after this, but two careers essentially ended after the group imploded. A spawn of Evolution, Legacy just didn’t reach the same heights.

Steven Jackson’s Top 5 Worst Wrestling Stables

Immortal

At one time, TNA had more stables than there were teams in the Premier League. Unlike the Premier League, all the stables sucked! None more so than Immortal. A throwback to dreadful WCW booking, this stable had over 25 members and more leaders than they allow at UN Conferences. Just a disaster from start to finish.

S.C.U.M.

I’m a massive fan of Ring of Honor, but even I have to admit that S.C.U.M. was just another awful nWo rip-off trying to cash in on the crazy success of Kevin Steen. The stable just didn’t really work and instead of being a threat, it just seemed an annoyance. Plus, nothing came of the stable once folding and somehow Steve Corino became a babyface commentator. Just bizarre.

The New Breed

This stable should have been something special. Instead, it was nothing more than a wasted opportunity. The New Breed in WWE’s ECW again never seemed a legitimate threat, and just felt like foil for the ECW Originals to get some wins over. Plus, having CM Punk join your group, only to leave after two weeks made no sense at all.

Mean Street Posse

As a kid, I never liked the Mean Street Posse. And I like them even less as an adult. A classic case of “Friends in High Places”, they were terrible.

The New Blood

WCW in 2000 are three words which strike fear into the hearts of all wrestling fans. When Vince Russo and Eric Bischoff joined forces, nobody quite knew what to expect. Maybe it would reinvigorate the struggling company to compete once again against the WWF. Or maybe it would lead them further down the well they were unable to get out of. Sadly, it was the latter. The New Blood was awful! Egotistical, nonsensical and diabolical, The New Blood is everything bad about wrestling stables.

Chad Gelfand’s Top 5 Worst Wrestling Stables

The Corre

The scraps of the Nexus made for one of the worst wrestling stables of all time, and despite them holding the IC and Tag Team Titles at the same time, they just felt unimportant, underscored by their match at WrestleMania 27 that got less than five minutes for an eight-man tag team match.

The New Blood

As a concept, it sounds good, but in execution, it left a lot to be desired. A stable of young wrestlers taking down the selfish, lazy old guard could make for a good storyline. Still, WCW, of course, had the future of their company positioned as heels who could only win through cheating and were inferior in every way to the established stars. In the end, it was typical late-era WCW where the old guys at the top kept their spots, and the young guys couldn’t advance up the card.

NWO Black and White

All I need to do to make my case is to list off the members of the NWO C Team: The Giant, Curt Hennig, Stevie Ray, Scott Norton, Brian Adams, HORACE HOGAN and VINCENT. Not exactly the recipe for a successful faction.

X-Factor

Outside of their annoyingly catchy Uncle Kracker theme song, the group didn’t really bring much to the table. X-Pac, Justin Credible and Albert seem like a pairing that was thrown together after Vince McMahon told a writer to make a faction out of the first three people he saw in the hallway.

The Spirit Squad

Taking a group of young, hungry developmental talents and giving them a main event push right away is good. Having them in feuds with established stars is also good. Having those same young guys get a gimmick of evil male cheerleaders and then getting their ass kicked by those same established stars for an entire summer is bad. The Spirit Squad’s lackluster run was topped off with them literally being shipped back to OVW, killing the careers of all but the former caddy of Chavo Guerrero.

John Corrigan’s Top 5 Worst Wrestling Stables

Spirit Squad

Top of the list of worst wrestling stables. (Is it too soon to include The Dark Order?) A male cheerleader gimmick was never going to get over and it killed the promising careers of nearly everyone involved. Dolph Ziggler’s ability to reinvent himself speaks volumes to his talent.

NWO B-Team

A bunch of scrubs fighting endlessly over who’s the leader.

League of Nations

So much untapped potential. Their claim to fame was beating The New Day at WrestleMania 32, and then immediately getting slaughtered by the dream team of Stone Cold, Mick Foley and Shawn Michaels.

The Social Outcasts

Remember them? Me either.

Disciples of Apocalypse/Los Boricuas

At least The Nation had star power. There’s not one standout member from either of these two factions and they spent so much time battling each other in a pointless race/gang war that it’s no wonder Nitro was kicking Raw’s ass.

Jack Goodwillie’s Top 5 Worst Wrestling Stables

I want to preface this list the same way I preface any list like this. To meet the requirements of a stable, in my mind, a group must have at least four members. That could mean four wrestlers, three wrestlers and a manager or even two wrestlers and two managers (Which is a thing…remember Mexican America?).

Truth Commission

The Truth Commission had the look of a bunch of big dudes parodying the concept of a pro wrestling stable without any of the talent or commitment required to pull it off effectively. Don’t get me wrong, the idea to parody the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was an original one, but that doesn’t mean every original idea needs to be made into a reality. When Kurrgan is considered the most successful prospect of the bunch, and yes, the same Kurrgan who Vince McMahon saw dancing with his wife at the WrestleMania XIV afterparty and decided to turn into a goofy babyface, it’s a telltale sign that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. It wasn’t until The Jackyl (Don Callis) joined the stable that the group became worth a damn at all, and had he not, we may be looking at a unanimous choice for the all-time worst stable, and one that was perhaps as forgettable as it was bad.

nWo Wolfpac

Many of you are probably going to slam this pick because perhaps you thought the Wolfpac was one of the coolest parts about WCW in 1998. And they certainly looked the part. But the introduction of the Wolfpac should not go blameless in the demise of WCW, and while I may one day do a piece on how I would have split up the nWo, I can confidently say that “Bloods vs. Crips” was probably not the answer. Even with the nWo having split into two concurrently running incarnations, both stables were STILL too big and size can be just the thing to cause a stable to ultimately go south.

When we think of nWo, we think of, and perhaps in this order, Hogan, Bischoff, Nash, Hall and then maybe The Giant. Of those names, Wolfpac had just one of them, Nash, and for my money, the indoctrination of this group was really more about using a catchy theme song and selling red nWo t-shirts than it was delivering quality pro wrestling television. Trust me, I know a good marketing ploy when I see one. Still, at least nWo Hollywood maintained four of the other names, including Hogan and Bischoff. This always made nWo Wolfpac look like the more superfluous and unnecessary of the two stables.

The League of Nations

The problems that plagued The League of Nations had nothing to do with its personnel. If you told me WWE was going to run with a stable consisting of Wade Barrett, Sheamus, Alberto Del Rio and Rusev, I’d say sign me up. However, as friend of the site Paul Green likes to say, “bad booking” quickly upended this group. One thing I can’t stand about WWE is how it continues to go back to the well of stable creation through stereotypes. Sure, we had The Nation back in the late ‘90s (I will get to that), but at a certain point the pairing of wrestlers this way gets tiresome. We later got Kaientai, and then Kyo Dai, then the Mexicools, then The New Day (which did prove to be an anomaly), Lucha House Party (LMAO) and now The Hurt Business. It’s a very ‘80s way of thinking that has been played out and is not effective anymore. This is part of the reason why The Nexus was such a great stable. Look at its members! It was a diverse group filled with wrestlers of different ethnicities, origins and dialects, but a common goal united them to do things previously unimaginable.

Getting back to The League of Nations, if you recall, Seth Rollins had gotten hurt, so Roman Reigns fulfilling his potential atop the card had suddenly become more important than ever. To Vince McMahon and the WWE creative team, the go-to method was to create a makeshift stable out of “foreign” wrestlers Rock ‘N Wrestling-style and smash Reigns over all of them like Hulk Hogan. The only problem is Roman Reigns is not Hulk Hogan and Sheamus is not the Iron Sheik. In fact, all four couldn’t be more different. After Sheamus cashed in with Money in the Bank and became the WWE Champion, he formed The League of Nations the next night on Raw. But if memory serves, this would be the peak of the stable, as it later became a bit that the members could never seem to be on the same page or find even a modicum of success as a unit. As a result, they disbanded in just five months and validated the thinking that the whole storyline had been yet another feeble attempt to get Roman Reigns over as a babyface.

National Wrestling Alliance

It pains me to have to put a Jim Cornette-led faction on this list of worst wrestling stables, but James E. will tell you himself that an NWA-style faction in the WWE was a shit idea. Similar to the League of Nations, this wasn’t so much about the personnel as it was the overall concept. If you told me we would be getting a stable of Jim Cornette, The Rock N Roll Express, Jeff Jarrett and Barry Windham, I’d have to say I’d be thrilled. But the fact that the NWA was a dead brand at this point arguably set the stable up to fail before it even debuted. Adding Dan Severn and The New Midnight Express to the mix weren’t exactly angle-killing decisions, but the simple fact is this group was never relevant. Nowadays, if you heard that there was a stable coming to WWE based on another wrestling company, you’d have to be mildly intrigued. But the WWE’s propensity to bury any three initials that aren’t their own six feet under probably means it’s best to stay away from invasion-style angles. A precursor to the Invasion, the NWA won maybe 10% of its matches, if that, and thus was never meant to be taken seriously. Generally speaking, it was a complete waste of time and talent during its eight months of existence.

Nation of Domination

I don’t think this is a pick many people will be satisfied with, but let’s be honest, what was The Nation’s biggest accomplishment, you know, outside of being a conduit for The Rock to become, well, The Rock. Like The Truth Commission, The Nation’s origins can be traced back to the USWA, which Vince McMahon used as his guinea pig to see what heel gimmicks might be able to get over. Here’s the problem: every single wrestler, including but not limited to The Rock, got significantly more of a rub when The Nation came to an end as opposed to while it was active. When we think of Faarooq, we think of the APA. When we think of Kama Mustafa, we think of The Godfather. When we think of D-Lo Brown, we think of the head wobble and maybe his time in TNA. When we think of Mark Henry, we think of The Hall of Pain and “I’ve got plenty more left in the tank.”

That’s not to say The Nation didn’t have potential. A gimmick like that needs to live in the gray area between what is right and what is over the top. This is what made the dynamic between MLK and Malcolm X so compelling from a historical perspective and one that inspired the basic plot and premise of the X-Men franchise. It’s also the difference between a good heel and a great heel. Good heels can get heat, great heels can get heat and make the audience second guess themselves. In the end, I found The Nation to be a little too cartoony than there was any reason for them to be, and bringing Owen Hart into the mix really threw everybody for a loop and further illustrated how much of a waste of talent this group was. Granted, it wasn’t all for naught, but all of the good things that would happen stemmed from the fact that this was just an ineffective collection of future stars.