Worst Factions Of All Time.

[Magnum Milano]

I'd say the York Foundation's music makes up for any 35 year olds who look 55 years old like Tommy Rich. I honestly do give them a free pass because of their music.

I almost didn't include the York Foundation purely because of Alexandra York. I never liked or found Terri Runnels attractive during her stints in the WWF, but found Alexandra York incredibly hot and sexy. Sadly, not even she could compensate for how awful Thomas Rich was.

[garynysmon]

I always hated the Dungeon of Doom to be honest. What on earth was Jimmy Hart doing in such a faction? Made no sense.

[TheBigBoot]

I liked the York Foundation and would even go as far as to say they were one of the highlights for me during that period in WCW. It did seem a bit dated at the time though (which reinforced the image of WCW as an outdated promotion in general) and the whole poking fun at 1980s ponytail wearing yuppies who come out to a Dallas inspired theme tune people seemed like it would have been an awesome idea for mid-card heels in 1986 JCP (I'm talking IC Champ Honkytonk Man level heat) but less so in the early 90's. Saw all their stuff again more recently when Sky Sports showed WCW Classics and I still enjoyed most of it.

 

Needs no explanation. I'm struggling to think of a group I hated more than the Filthy Animals. I'm probably forgetting some though.

 

I have mixed feelings about that one. I thought the original group with Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio and Billy Kidman before they really had that name was really good. I thought it made sense to put three of their better babyfaces at the time together as a mid-card group since they didn't really seem to be doing much else with them.

 

Then after Russo and Ferrera came in and called them their version of DX they were still okay, albeit yet another blatant rip-off of something else that had worked for Russo in WWF. The spot where Eddie would KO his opponent out with a chair while the ref was distracted, then pretend his opponent hit him with it (which he later recycled in WWE) was fun, Kidman and Mysterio were a cracking little team (in both WCW and WWE) and even though I didn't like his in-ring stuff but Konnan was over and fine as their spokesperson. Granted Torrie was green and the angle with Flair was strange and exactly like something out of Russo-era TNA (at least a couple of years ago, haven't seen enough of the current product) but the fact it was building to a Guerrero heel turn/seducing Torrie and feuds with Rey and Kidman for 2000 was alright by me.

 

Once Guerrero left/was replaced by Juvi and Mysterio started wearing those Terri Runnels horns on his head the whole thing went to Hell. They were just so ineffective as heels in the New Blood and their babyface run also sucked. Only Disqo seemed to be into it and even he couldn't save them by that point.

 

I'm going for the nWo 'B' team circa 1999. Seemingly existed only to shame those fans still wearing their black and white t-shirts into upgrading to the red ones, lest they sully their names as Virgil and Horace Hogan fans.

 

That's a pretty clever marketing strategy.

 

Kurrgan was never going to make it

 

Out of interest, why?

 

The guy wasn't a great worker but WWF didn't have anyone that size at the time. When I first saw him my reaction was "future Undertaker (who was then WWF Champ) opponent". Not saying I thought he was going to become a great worker but I had the opposite reaction to you in that back in Summer 1997 I thought he would be the kind of guy who would have gotten a big push at some point.

[air_raid]

Don't believe anyone's mentioned RTC or J.O.B squad,

 

I bloody did, nigh on last post before yours...

 

RTC were just kind of "there" for me, good heat drawing gimmick but the music did my nut in.

 

Speaking of music, I wish X-Factor had succeeded so that every time I hear the phrase "X-Factor" it would make me think of Credible, double superkicks and Uncle Kracker rather than Simon Cowell, wor Cheryl, Matt The Hat and sodding Jedward.

[TheBigBoot]

HOOTY HOOOOOOOOOOOO! The No Limit Soldiers were absolutely fucking terrible now I think about it.

That's a good shout actually. My most vivid memories of them were just how cringeworthy the Press Conference was, in no small part thanks to Bischoff talking complete and utter shit. And for some reason i always remember the image of one of their members, some roid monkey by the name of Tatum or something, hitting the most embarrassing dropkicks ever.

 

Yeah NLS sucked. Why anyone would want to cheer them over cool guys like Barry Windham and Curt Hennig I had no idea. Neither did WCW's fanbase based on the reactions they got.

 

As I said in another thread recently though the one and only reason I was in favour of the group is that "as a fan of Brad Armstrong, I was actually pleased he was getting something resembling a push! In 1998 if someone had told me Brad would be involved in a celebrity angle the following summer, I'd have laughed at them. So whilst I knew he was realistically just there to carry the load, I was hoping the angle would keep going so him and Rey would get some PPV time out of it. I actually thought a cool old school guy like ol' B.A. getting the celeb rub (even in a crap angle with a rapper I'd never heard of) was pretty cool at the time." Even if its a silly gimmick then I didn't mind Armstrong been in it for the same reason some here were hoping Val Venis would get a push a few years ago where you have someone who has been around for years doing a good job its always nice to see someone like that get a bit more TV time/exposure. I also thought him and Rey were two of the better workers around at the time so as long as they kept those two in the ring the matches were going to be decent. On the other hand the guys they paired them with were so bad they'd have been better not doing it at all and finding a different way to get Brad on TV more often.

 

In retrospect, it was also the start of Mysterio's decline in '99-'00. People point to the Nash angle and the subsequent unmasking but really Rey was still pretty over after that and the team with Kidman I mentioned above was good. That was probably the right direction for them to go in (and WCW obviously agreed seeing as they put him and Kidman back together as soon as this was over) and taking him out of it and sticking him in a doomed celeb angle actually seemed to make him less over. I don't think he stood out as a worker as much anymore either, whether that was due to apathy, laziness or injuries. By 2000 in the Filthy Animals people were calling him 'past it'. It was only towards the end of WCW that I got the feeling he was fully motivated again.

 

I can't believe Kaientai and The Brood were included here. The Brood never maybe reached the potential it was granted by their frankly excellent entrance music (one of, if not the best entrance theme WWE has ever made) and Kaientai were better when it was just TAKA and Funaki, but they were both fun stables.

 

I'm surprised at a lot of them actually not just those two but things like Mean Street Posse and X-Factor (who I do remember getting a lot of hate at the time but since about 2004 I was under the impression it had swung the other way around?). It seems like only last week there were threads on here praising The New Breed and saying the Dusty Rhodes-led ECW had finally found a solid direction. In which case it seems like only yesterday that people were complaining it was too short-lived. They (and their theme) were definitely one of my favourite things about WWE in early 2007 and a fair bit of WWE in that period. To to tie into that, Kai En Tai (along with nWo) are the only factions I think I've ever seen that have been mentioned by more than one or two people (which is going to happen with anything) as both 'Best Faction Ever' and 'Worst Faction Of All Time' on the same forum. Saying that, I actually like the fact that there aren't any concrete 'consensus opinions' on here.

 

I always thought the Natural Born Thrillers were the drizzling shits. Only two and a half of them were any good and the shiteness of the others more than cancelled that out.

Good call. I hated them, all cookie-cutter wrestlers with (at the time) little or no personality and very limited ability. As green as you can get and thrown straight into our faces. Awful.

 

Bad call on Mean Street Posse, I loved these guys! They served a purpose- absolute shit preppy boys that were in there because their pal was the boss' son. And their theme tune was boss.

 

Agreed on both.

 

Hated NBT at the time. I suppose that goes back to my previous point in that I wasn't really on forums back then and didn't know anyone who still watched WCW at that point so was a bit surprised that I've seen praise for them on here since. I thought they were exactly as you described "cookie-cutter wrestlers" really the start of the 'well built young guy in plain trunks with a realistic name who gets shoved on TV before they are ready' thing going from the exception to a large group of them which is probably the worst thing to happen to U.S. wrestling in the last decade, IMO.

 

The thing I liked about the Posse (other than their theme tune) was that they were basically portrayed as non-wrestlers. Which was true in the case of Rodney and Pete Gas. So it made sense that they didn't wrestle like polished pros because they were never presented as such. Admittedly, that doesn't make their matches good but at least they knew their role. I thought a lot WWF's matches in general stunk around that time so I find it hard to blame them and I do think they worked hard to try and get better as well.

 

I personally really hated the JOB Squad, because they seemed designed for smarks. "Huh huh look at us poke fun at how we lose every match and do the J O B on the P P V." Plus it pissed me off how it highlighted how often Scorp lost, he deserved better. Christ, he got to win a few times when he was tagging up with Bagwell.

 

That particular one never annoyed me, but I actually felt the same as you did about a lot of WWF's product at the time in terms of all the inside references. I got them but I did wonder what the casual fans made of it all.

 

Anyway, I loved the JOB Squad at the time - probably my favourite WWF act behind Mick Foley and Road Dogg that Winter. Although thinking about it, it was more for the reasons I mentioned about B.A. in the NLS - it got Holly (who I was a bit of a mark for) back on PPV and Scorpio some TV time, than the actual gimmick itself. I had given up on Scorp and Holly (although I was wrong on that) ever getting a push by that point so I probably would have taken any gimmick they'd come up with at the time if it meant it got them on PPV. Just taking three talented undercard guys and sticking them in, an all too brief, feud with The Brood was something I marked out for at the time when I thought the standard of in-ring stuff was dropping.

 

When they added Blue Meanie and made him the second most pushed member of the team, behind Snow, I stopped caring but the first few months they were one of the things I liked best about WWF's undercard.

 

Plus I was probably one of the few that thought "Gillberg" was pathetic, rather than funny. I preferred it when they ignored the competition in smug "we're better" arrogance rather than try and rip the piss.

 

Now that part I can agree with. First time they did it was okay, but I think that it should have been a one-off joke. After that when they kept wheeling him I thought it was pretty pathetic as well.

WWF were winning the war at that point and I don't think mocking Goldberg really added anything to the show. Which is a shame because I liked his initial comeback stuff as Dwayne Gill - the angle at Survivor Series was one of my favourites from that year. I didn't even mind him winning the (worthless by that point) LH title from Christian because it seemed like the set up for a Squad/Brood feud which I was in favour of for the reasons above.

 

I realise some of the reason I didn't get as much of a kick out of Gillberg as a lot of the WWF audience might be because I actually liked WCW but in all fairness I'd have felt the same way/said the exact same thing if WCW had introduced a Bret Hart or Shawn Michaels character when they were winning things. I can understand that kind of thing better when you are struggling to think of ideas and no matter what you say you can't catch up and the only thing you can think of is to mock the opposition.

[freaky]

I hated The Union. Shit name, didn't last very long and I forget why they even teamed up in the first place.

[Baxter]

I hated The Union. Shit name, didn't last very long and I forget why they even teamed up in the first place.

 

Beat me to it here. The union was pants, the entrance theme was abysmal. Glad it didn't last long

[garynysmon]

I hated The Union. Shit name, didn't last very long and I forget why they even teamed up in the first place.

 

Wasn't it against the awful 'McMahon-Helmsley' dictatorship?

[Magnum Milano]

I hated The Union. Shit name, didn't last very long and I forget why they even teamed up in the first place.

 

Wasn't it against the awful 'McMahon-Helmsley' dictatorship?

see xear's post

[Turnbucklepads]

The Un-Americans - Not only the shittest name for a group ever. Sounds like the sort of name you would give a make believe faction in your Hasbro collection.

Ashamed to admit that I once had teamed both versions of the BossMan together, to call them "The Round Boys"

 

Back on topic. The Un-Americans did nothing at all in a time when WWE could easily be forgotten. Christian looked like shit and needed a good hair cut, Test was shit as he always was, and Lance Storm was alright but it had all been done in ECW and WCW year before.

[LaGoosh]

Has everyone forgotton about the Mexicools?

[ShortOrderCook]

'Un-American' is actually a term used in American culture for the sort of behaviour those rascals got up to and similar. So the name wasn't that shit.

 

And yes, anyone saying The Mean Street Posse, The Brood and Kai En Tai were rubbish are entirely wrong. I loved all 3 for very different reasons.

 

 

TheBigBoots comments on the Natural Born Thrillas being the start of the cookie-cutter wrestlers becoming a common thing in US wrestling are bang on and exactly why they are the answer to this question.

[Zpencee]

Truth Commision hater here.

 

I actually looked around to see what Bull was doing nowadays.

 

To no surprise, he is doing Indies in the GA area

[air_raid]

Ashamed to admit that I once had teamed both versions of the BossMan together, to call them "The Round Boys"

 

Thats nothing. I was unoriginal enough to put Ultimate Warrior 2 and 3 together in a team based on a story that suddenly there were two of them knocking around (based on my mates being convinced the one that appeared at WM8 "wasnt the same guy") and simply call them "The Ultimate Warriors."

 

I also tagged up yellow and blue Mr Perfect as The Perfect Team, except blue was actually Hennig and yellow I gave some random name I forget. Probably something generic and nondescript like Michael McGillicutty.

 

My favourite tag team was black Terminator who I decided was actually Mulder from X-Files, and battle damaged Terminator who I painted blue (WTF) and decided was Eugene Toombs. Why Mulder & Toombs would tag up, I never figured out.

 

I always hated the Dungeon of Doom to be honest. What on earth was Jimmy Hart doing in such a faction? Made no sense.

 

He got sick of and wanted to turn on Hogan. They were feuding with Hogan and wanted to destroy him. Nothing more complicated than that. Plus with all the 80s WWF leftovers that were shunted in and out - Beefcake, Earthquake, Barbar, Haku - he probably felt at home.

 

First Family were gash, weren't they?

[The King Of Swing]

Problem with both RTC and the Un-American's is that they were just Vince McMahon having a go at certain groups that had upset him (the PTC and people/nations who refused to get in line with the US) so both factions were doomed to fail as soon as Vince lost interest.