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Stables


tiger_rick

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Miss a good Stable. WWE seem averse to anything but a trio these days. Most of the recent ones have been joke acts other than that UN group they did with Sheamus, Barrett, Rusev and Del Rio.

I love a stable with a proper hierarchy. Enjoy a babyface having to bust through the roadblocks to get to the guy at the top. Also like the multi man matches that naturally come with a stable with many feuds going on at once.

Such a pity they've gone away from them in WWE. They're so effective. Not in TNA where they've always had hundreds who mean nothing though. 

My favourite is the Horsemen/Evolution style faction that seeks to collect gold and elevate promising guys by association. Did always like the Raven's flock dynamic too. We're seeing similar effectiveness at the moment with Miz using Axel and Dallas. Good stuff that has revitalised two jabronis and made Mizmore interesting.

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You misspelled 'Disciples of Apocalypse' there, Butch.

I love stables. Proper stables with hierarchy as Rick put it, rather than lazily sticking mid card guys together. The 1997/98 version of the Nation of Domination is one of my favs- after they brought Mizark in. The relationship between Farooq and Rock was done brilliantly and really laid the foundations for The Rock I worshipped a couple of years later.

It's really not hard to put a good stable together- shove one in the main event picture, one in a mid card title feud and have the other two go for the tag straps. Perhaps a bonus member- either a bit of muscle as an enforcer, a mouthpiece manager or a woman wrestler (e.g. Ivory in RTC). Sanity is probably the best example of getting the formula right (or close to it) in recent years.

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8 hours ago, PowerButchi said:

Actually, now I think about it the best was easily The Corre. 

Followed closely by The Union.

stables are great and you could make some beauties with Hasbros. 

Top boy / world champ - Ric Flair.

Protege / IC - Mr Perfect

Tag Team - HBK and Rick Martel.

They were lethal and no one else stood a chance in a survivor series or a rumble.

 

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One of the reasons I liked DragonGate so much was because it was unique in that it was all factions, of varying degrees on the blue-eye/villain spectrum. Definitely a different and enjoyable take on stables. CrazyMAX were the classic CIMA faction, Blood Generation was the exciting evolution from that with a load of dynamic blue-chipper heels, Italian Connection were a hell of a load of fun, and Aagan Iisou were the ultimate in villainry, utter bastards. I'm sure there's a load more I missed, but it was a really good format. I enjoyed DG a lot until the no-gimmick RoH shit-arses started showing up and stinking up the place.

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Sanity have done it surprisingly well - the problem with a group like Sanity, usually, is that you want to keep the likes of Killian Dain as a scary unbeatable motherfucker but, at the same time, he needs to be a mook for people to get past en route to Eric Young. So in matches, Dain's a beast, but in angles and brawls, he sometimes just gets brushed aside by a bloke making a beeline for his boss. They seem to have got the balance right more recently, though.

 

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I'm all for the likes of Evolution providing a platform and the rub for elevating talent and giving main eventers someone interesting to fight through on their way to the champ, but the kind of factions I hate are those like the Edgeheads, where the "buffer" is just a pair of lackeys with no real identity or perceived chance of accomplishing anything more than slowing the challenger down, which just makes a feud feel dragged out with filler matches.

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1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

Sanity have done it surprisingly well - the problem with a group like Sanity, usually, is that you want to keep the likes of Killian Dain as a scary unbeatable motherfucker but, at the same time, he needs to be a mook for people to get past en route to Eric Young. So in matches, Dain's a beast, but in angles and brawls, he sometimes just gets brushed aside by a bloke making a beeline for his boss. They seem to have got the balance right more recently, though.

 

I 100% agree with this.

I can't help think that the original tag partner who got injured (or another) could rejoin and then keep Dain as a special attraction. More of a henchman role, with a bit of a Braun appeal. It's a bit late now obviously. But you are right, he is billed as a bit of a monster, but still gets slapped about more than he should. I'm not saying he should be completely  unstoppable, but the awe is fading.

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I've been watching New Japan a lot in the last couple of months with the G1 climax etc. 

Almost everyone has a faction alliance. But the stables vary wildly in quality.

Los Ingobernables de Japon is easily the best, with Naito as the top star but everyone having good roles. EVIL looks most likely to step up to the upper levels of the company soon, SANADA is like a different man to the former TNA competitor and the junior heavyweight members of the group are great too.

Bullet Club are like 1998 nWo - the most recognisable for merchandise, but bloated and with about a hundred members. Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks are the Elite sub-group that appeal most to fans of US and UK Indies, and also interact with Marty Scurll (yay) and Cody (yawn). Elsewhere, Tama Tonga had a good G1 tournament and usually teams with his brothers, they are Haku's sons. Bad Luck Fale's Underboss gimmick appeals to me, but he's not particularly charismatic and the restof the Bullet Club underlings are worse.

Chaos has been around in one form or another since the 2000s (!) and as a group feels most like a bunch of individuals thrown together - but you've got undisputed ace of the company Okada as the main man, Goto and Ishii almost main event level, Toru Yano for brilliant slapstick comedy, and other names in the group include Will Ospreay and Rocky Romero. 

Suzuki-gun are the wild card faction, with 49 year old Minoru Suzuki leading a crazy group known for brawls and underhandedness that includes Zack Sabre Jr, Davey Boy Smith Jr and Lance Archer who are familiar to western audiences, Taka Michinoku and a bunch of other interference runners.

Taguchi Japan is the newest group, with Taguchi fancying himself as a soccer coach and the group are funky to say the least. Taguchi was Prince Devitt's multi time Jr Heavyweight tag partner before Bullet Club was formed. He's now Jr Heavy tag champ with Ricochet. 

I guess my point is factions can be good.. but it takes more than randomly assembling guys into groups to make it work. In New Japan it works for the most part. It takes booking attention to detail though, and WWE rarely gives that to more than a handful of people at once.

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It never really went anywhere, but one of my favourite faction-related angles was David Otunga's jealous "Starscream" role in the Nexus, always trying to undermine the leader and set the scene to usurp him. Fizzled out but it was fun while it lasted.

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The Flock were fantastic fodder for Goldberg. Such an underrated part of his rise, that feud. Seeing him run through all of them and creating chaos was always brilliant, as a kid.

Anyway, the 3-man stables seemed to be a bit of a Vince stiffy, a few years ago, as we got all manner of great matches featuring The Shield, The Wyatt Family and Evolution.

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CHAOS are much closer to what I think of as a "traditional" Japanese faction; they don't run interference for each other, or really even interact all that much, they're just loosely aligned, and will tag up in multi-man matches when necessary, but for the most part it's more of a banner they fight under than a "team". Bullet Club, and the stables that have followed in their wake, are a much more Westernised approach to the wrestling stable - as was initially the whole point of Bullet Club, really - so perhaps feel like more of a unit in that regard.

Probably the smartest thing Omega and the Young Bucks ever did was create "The Elite" as a sort of spin-off brand of Bullet Club, so they could still seem vaguely cool and important, rather than sharing the spotlight with Chase Owens.

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