D-Generation X is one of the most iconic stables in WWE history. The group offered an edgy, defining element for the Attitude Era before becoming one of the company’s most popular nostalgia acts in the late 2000s.

Related: D-Generation X: 10 Backstage Stories About The Faction That We Can't Believe

Not every iteration of DX was created equally, though. While the group furthered Shawn Michaels’s legacy, was instrumental in getting Triple H, pushed The New Age Outlaws as one of the hottest tag team acts ever, and more, DX also had its moments of feeling outdated, outgunned, or watered down. This article looks back at different versions of the faction, ranking them from worst to best.

10 Battling The Brothers Of Destruction

The idea of DX coming back together in 2018 didn’t exactly sound promising. After all, Shawn Michaels had been retired for over eight years and Triple H, while still capable, was well past his prime as an in-ring performer.

Related: Brothers Of Destruction: The 5 Best Tag Team Rivalries For The Undertaker & Kane (& 5 We Wish WE Could’ve Seen)

Setting up the iconic duo to face The Brothers of Destruction had some promise. However, the build to their Crown Jewel confrontation was marred by the age of everyone involved. To make matters worse, the resulting match was a disaster. Though Michaels performed well—especially for someone retired for so long—it was an embarrassing outing for everyone else that culminated in Triple H getting legitimately injured. In the end, this was HBK and DX going out at their lowest point, when it was clear they were overdue to retire the act for good.

9 Welcoming Hornswoggle Into The Fold

DX’s last later runs saw them more or less give up any pretense of being cutting edge or legitimately cool. Triple H and Shawn Michaels reached their nadir, though, when they accepted a third member into their ranks: Hornswoggle.

Hornswoggle was the antithesis of everything DX had originally been about, as a group that catered to teens and young adults who were sick of family-friendly WWE offerings in the 1990s. His addition resolved any question as to whether anyone should take the group seriously anymore, alienating nostalgic fans who had still backed HBK and The Game because of what their partnership once was.

8 X-Pac And The Outlaws Keep Things Rolling

WrestleMania XV saw some major plot twists. First, Chyna helped Triple H in his battle with Kane, reuniting the celebrated pair and seemingly reinstating D-Generation X as a force to be reckoned with. However, later in the night, both Triple H and Chyna turned on X-Pac. In doing so, the pair established that they were allied again, but as part of The Corporation rather than DX.

X-Pac and The New Age Outlaws carried forward with the group, but without a credible main event star or someone clearly on the rise to a top spot, they felt largely neutered. While a storyline revolving around X-Pac, Kane, and Tori had promise, it also ran overly long and felt like a soap opera for its romantic undertones and betrayals along the way.

7 WrestleMania 31

DX stages an unlikely one-night reunion in 2015. The occasion? Backing Triple H, as a representative of old school WWE, opposite Sting, who had the nWo in his corner, representing WCW.

Related: 5 Ways The nWo Was The Top Stable Of The '90s (& 5 Ways It Was DX)

From the moment the DX music hit, there was a fun, nostalgic vibe to this match. It was far too late to realize the proper DX vs. nWo dream match fans might have clamored for fifteen years earlier, but this short, sweet reunion spot highlighted what DX still had to offer all those years later.

6 The Briefest Reunion

Early 2002 WWE programming highlighted the New World Order as one of the top heel acts in the company. By summer, their angle gave way to a DX reunion, with Shawn Michaels back on TV regularly, though not yet back in the ring. Triple H persuaded HBK to team up with him again on the premise of the two of them tormenting GM Eric Bischoff.

The prospect of The Game and The Showstopper being back on the same page for a meaningful angle, after they hadn’t been properly allied for roughly four years, felt like a lot of fun and led to an electric segment as they came to the ring together. This reunion would be over in the blink of an eye, however, when Triple H turned on his old buddy to set up Michaels’s return to the ring and a long rivalry between them.

5 Fighting Legacy

Triple H’s 2009 feud with Randy Orton gave way to a subplot of Orton’s Legacy teammates, Cody Rhodes and Ted Dibiase, repeatedly foiling The Game. Finally, The Cerebral Assassin called in backup, enticing Shawn Michaels to return from sabbatical to put the young talents in their place.

One of the best parts about DX’s feud with Legacy was how even it was. Legacy got the best of their initial brawl, the night Michaels and Helmsley formally reunited. While DX won the subsequent tag match at SummerSlam, Legacy prevailed in the rematch when they made Michaels tap out at Breaking Point. They blew off the issue in a suitably brutal Hell in a Cell affair that included Rhodes and Dibiase outsmarting the faces when they locked out The Game to double team Michaels, only to finally get their comeuppance after Triple H broke in.

4 Joining The McMahon-Helmsley Era

DX felt largely obsolete after Triple H turned his back on the group in 1999, leaving them without a true leader. However, the band got back together to rally behind The Game in 2000. By then Helmsley was firmly established as a main eventer, paired with Stephanie McMahon.

By this point, X-Pac and The New Age Outlaws were more firmly sidekicks for Triple H than proper faction members on comparable footing. Nonetheless, they served their purpose, if only as fun bodies to run interference for The Cerebral Assassin, and get their butts kicked as his proxies by guys like Stone Cold Steve Austin.

3 The 2006 Reunion

In 2006, Triple H had more or less run his course as a main event heel, and Shawn Michaels was entrenched in a feud with Mr. McMahon and allies. Things took a fun turn when HBK confronted Triple H about not helping him. Yes, the angle ignored their years of storyline feuding, but more importantly, it planted the seeds that they might team up since their false start four years earlier, and really for the first time in nearly a decade.

Seeing The Game and HBK on the same page again was a lot of fun, as was watching them tear through The Spirit Squad and the McMahons en route to finding some proper competition opposite Rated RKO.

2 The Original

It’s hard to top the first iteration of a great faction. Indeed, when D-Generation X first came together—a unit composed of Shawn Michaels, Triple H, and their respective bodyguards, Rick Rude and Chyna—they hadn’t yet honed what DX would be. However, Michaels and Helmsley’s crude humor and foul language set the foundation for what was to come.

Though Rude shook out of the group, due to real life disagreement with how the Montreal Screwjob went down, the remaining group members carried on with HBK reigning as world champion all the way up to WrestleMania XIV. Michaels played the heel world champion who headed the hottest faction in WWE, only to pass the torch to Stone Cold Steve Austin as the top face in a pivotal moment for the Attitude Era.

1 The DX Army

When Shawn Michaels dropped the world title at WrestleMania XIV, he walked away from the ring altogether. Little known to fans at the time, he had severe back issues, not to mention personal challenges related to substance abuse.

It would have been easy enough for DX to have faded from view in the absence of its leader. However, Triple H cut an impassioned promo on Raw the next night, before introducing a returning X-Pac as his new partner in crime. Group them together with The New Age Outlaws as they were gathering steam, and DX felt cooler, younger, and more dangerous than ever. Triple H would ride this wave of momentum all the way to a proper main event spot for himself.

Next: 10 Best DX Matches Ever, Ranked