The glory days of the wrestling faction are all but gone. There was a time when the idea of a group of wrestlers banding together to take on the world was about as entertaining as the business got. The Freebirds, the Dangerous Alliance, the Four Horsemen, DX, the nWo...the list of all-time classic factions goes on. Somewhere along the way, though, bookers seemed to forget what made the idea of the wrestling faction special. Once that happened, more and more companies began throwing wrestlers together without any real purpose or any plans for future storylines. That’s when we started to get some truly awful group gimmicks.

Since 2000, we have had to endure a number of awful factions. While you can place some of the blame at the foot of Vince McMahon who is apparently not a faction fan, WWE is far from the only company who has struggled to pay groups the respect that they deserve. The result of that disrespect has been years worth of factions that we wish we could just forget about. Because we cannot, though, we thought we’d take you on a chronological tour of the worst of the worst. These are the absolute dumbest wrestling faction gimmicks since the year 2000.

19 2000 - Misfits in Action

misfit

There’s something to be said for how little WCW cared about what they put on television towards the end. 2000 WCW is a treasure trove of truly awful booking decisions, storylines, and - for our purposes - gimmicks. Yet, there were few factions quite as absurd as the crude crew known as Misfits in Action. Actually, the group itself wasn’t that bad at first as it consisted of Hugh Morrus, Lash LeRoux, Chavo Guerrero, Jr., and Booker T. and Bam Bam Bigelow just battling heels. However, the second incarnation of the group was truly awful. The gimmick was changed to a bunch of wrestlers who were supposedly in the military. There was Captain/General Hugh G. Rection, Lt. Loco, Cpl. Cajun, and Major Stash and - eventually - Major Gunns.

None of the members involved had anything to better to do and should have been out of the company.

Instead, WCW decided to let them hang around and job out to the stars while wearing camouflage. The group’s highlight came when the wrestler who portrayed Private Stash requested a promotion to Major as he felt that his fake Private rank was demeaning. Yes, that really happened. That’s WCW in 2000 in a nutshell.

18 2001 - The X-Factor

via wwe.com

There’s a term in wrestling known as X-Pac heat. This is the kind of heat a wrestler draws when the crowd is legitimately booing him. That doesn’t mean that the crowd is booing them because they’re a great heel or even because they’re emotionally invested in what the character does (like John Cena or Roman Reigns) but rather that they’re being booed because the crowd just doesn’t want to see them in the ring or on television. When X-Pac was in the midst of drawing some prime X-Pac heat, WWE decided to build an entire faction around him. It consisted of X-Pac, Justin Credible, and Albert. What was the group’s gimmick? So far as we can tell, the three men came together due to their shared desire to be in a group led by X-Pac. Why anyone - including X-Pac - would ever want to be led by X-Pac is beyond us, but there you have it.

Regardless, the group had moderate success at the start of their run before promptly being relegated to jobber status. They are best remembered for their truly awful theme song sung by Uncle Kracker which in no way fit the group or even a professional wrestling show.

17 2002- Thuggin and Buggin Enterprises

via youtube.com

Vince McMahon hasn’t ever been referred to as the most racially sensitive person in the world. Actually, let’s back that up a step. We’re pretty sure Vince McMahon has never been referred to as the most racially sensitive person in a room solely occupied by Vince McMahon. While we’re not going to call Vince an outright racist, he does have a tendency to book - or approve the booking of - any minority or foreign wrestler as a minority or foreign wrestler. While the technique has worked for him in the past in the case of some foreign heel gimmicks, Vince can’t seem to get over the fact that non-white dudes aren’t white dudes.

Even by Vince standards, though, Thuggin and Buggin Enterprises was a truly awful booking decision.

Led by Teddy Long, the initial group consisted of a group of minority wrestlers who felt that they were being held back because of their race. That’s actually not the worst gimmick ever, but the group’s name kind of compromised the entire idea. It also didn’t help that Christopher Nowinski - the whitest man in WWE at that time - joined the group for no apparently good reason. What a joke.

16 2003 - Next Generation

via cachearena.com

Do you remember the WWE group Legacy? It consisted of Randy Orton, Cody Rhodes, Ted DiBiase Jr., and - briefly - Manu. The gimmick of the group was that the entire group consisted of the sons of famous wrestler. The reason the gimmick worked - at least for a time - is because the wrestlers involved were either really good in their own right (Randy Orton) or were legitimately seen as rising stars (Cody Rhodes). Now, what happens when you apply that same gimmick to three wrestlers that are outright awful and had no chance of ever getting better? TNA answered that question in 2003 with the arrival of The Next Generation.

This faction consisted of David Flair, Erik Watts (son of Bill Watts), and the Brian Lawler (aka Grandmaster Sexay). If you can find it, you have to watch literally any footage of these three making their way to the ring. None of them look like professional wrestlers and all of them look like they’d literally like to be anywhere else than where they are. The idea of a stable of generational wrestlers who were among the worst wrestlers in the company at the time is just a strictly embarrassing gimmick

15 2004 - The Cabinet

via wwe.com

This actually isn’t the worst gimmick on this list - not even close - but in a year devoid of some truly awful new group gimmicks, we look at The Cabinet. One of the best booking decisions that WWE has made in the last 18 years or so was the decision to make JBL WWE Champion. JBL had just started a racist Texas businessman gimmick that helped sell his feud with Eddie Guerrero. Rather than just let Guerrero beat JBL and be done with it, WWE decided to give JBL the belt at a time when his heat was nuclear. That was the good decision. The bad decision was to give JBL a “cabinet.”

First off, we’re not sure why JBL needed a “cabinet” of managers and fellow wrestlers.

Even if he did need a stable, we have absolutely no idea who picked the wrestlers who participated in it. Orlando Jordan was seemingly brought in to throw some water on the JBL racist promos, Amy Weber might just be the worst female personality in recent memory, Jillian Hall had a mole on her face for no real reason, and The Basham Brothers failed to intimidate anyone as the group’s head of security.

14 2005 - The Mexicools

via wcwworldwide.com

Oh boy...where do you even start with this one? Contrary to popular belief, the end of the attitude era wasn’t the end of risque content for WWE. There were still bloody feuds, there were still bra and panties matches, and there were still outlandish storylines. In fact, the post-attitude era time period of WWE contains some of the absolute worst and most offensive storylines the company ever approved. From Vince McMahon’s incest infatuation to Kurt Angle trying to rape Booker T’s wife, it was some truly dark times. Then you have The Mexicools. When Super Crazy, Psicosis, and Juventud rode out on “Juan Deere” lawn mowers one fateful SmackDown, fans thought they had seen the worst. That was until the next week when the group explained that they had formed because of a lack of “true luchadors.”

Yes, this group of the most stereotypically offensive Mexicans in the world were supposedly supposed to represent what true Mexican wrestlers looked like. The group also stated they were no longer in the company just to clear toilets - huh? - and immediately proceeded to feud with the Full Blooded Italians. It was a trainwreck of a gimmick that somehow survived several weeks of television.

13 2006 - The Spirit Squad

via wwe.com

There was actually no shortage of bad group gimmicks in 2005. TNA alone had three or four groups that are at least worthy of consideration for a spot on this list. Actually, you could make the argument that the reincarnated version of DX - who the Spirit Squad feuded with - were an even worse group given the number of bad segments they starred in that year. Yet, if we’re talking about strictly bad gimmicks, then this might just be one of the worst in the history of WWE. The Spirit Squad were a group of male cheerleaders.

In and of itself, that’s an odd gimmick, but what made them even more bizarre is that they were a group of male cheerleaders who were primarily brought in to feud with Shawn Michaels and Triple H.

Why? We honestly have no idea. Yet, WWE somehow wanted us to buy into the idea that Vince McMahon could only find a group of male cheerleaders to take on two of the biggest stars in the company. There was actually genuine talent on the squad - including a young Dolph Ziggler - but to this day, we have no idea why Vince thought this was a good gimmick.

12 2007 - Team Pacman

Every now and then, a wrestling company brings in a celebrity guest star to boost ratings and/or further a storyline. Sometimes, it works well. The most famous example of that would certainly be the time that Mike Tyson was brought in to promote WrestleMania XIV. However, there are many other times when the whole thing comes off as pathetic and sad. Then you have the time that TNA brought in Pacman Jones. For those who don’t know, Pacman Jones is a professional football players. On the surface, that makes him a good guest. Many professional football players have graced the professional wrestling ring.

The problem is that Pacman Jones is a professional football player who was famous for doing things like causing chaos in a gentlemen's club. TNA brought him in at his lowest point - which is probably when he was the cheapest to book - and heavily promoted his arrival. Rather than just having him show up at a PPV, though, they decided to let Pacman stick around for a while and form Team Pacman. The idea that two wrestlers like Ron Killings and Austin Creed would follow Pacman was an absurd notion that was allowed to play out on TV for way too long.

11 2008 - TNA Frontline

via prowrestling.wikia.com

In 2008, TNA ran a storyline that actually garnered some positive attention from wrestling fans. It began when Kurt Angle started the Main Event Mafia; a group of top veteran stars who demanded to keep the top spots in the company rather than step aside and let the young guys take their spots. It was a great idea made better by the fact that not everyone in the group was necessarily a heel. Even Sting joined the squad over a perceived lack of respect. That storyline was a cool way to play off the fact that TNA was going through a “Young vs. Old” real-life problem, but it was compromised by the arrival of the TNA Frontline.

Who were the Frontline? Well, they were basically everyone that wasn’t in the Main Event Mafia. The reason that gimmick was so awful is because it had no reason to exist. The Main Event Mafia didn’t need some competing faction; they just needed wrestlers that opposed them. TNA tried to turn this into a faction war, which quickly diluted any value the Main Event Mafia had. There’s nothing worse than a faction gimmick that ruins another potentially awesome faction just because they exist.

10 2009 - The World Elite

via deviantart.com

We hope you’re comfortable in TNA land, because we’re not going anywhere anytime soon. What’s remarkable about TNA is how they managed to take conceivably good ideas and turn them into awful ones. For instance, there came a point in 2009 when the company realized that they had a lot of top-tier foreign wrestling talent on the roster. So, they decided to put some of those wrestlers together and form “The World Elite.” A faction consisting of some of the top foreign talent in the world? Think of all the things you can do with that...and then immediately throw those ideas away when you realize that TNA booked them all as anti-American heels.

The problems with this gimmick were many.

First off, who chose Eric Young as the leader of a group of foreign wrestlers? Second, why was the group paired with the Main Event Mafia who they share no goals with and who disbanded shortly afterwards. Third, why oh why was Kevin Nash - a very American wrestler - inducted into the group? Finally, did TNA have to make it look like every single foreign wrestler in the company from so many countries all felt like they were better than Americans?

9 2010 - The Band

via prowrestling.wikia.com

TNA strikes back! As many of you probably know, Hulk Hogan helped change professional wrestling forever when he joined the nWo. The nWo might just be the greatest wrestling faction ever. The idea of a group of former WWE wrestlers “admitting” they were trying to destroy WCW from the inside was a brilliant piece of storytelling that WCW never really topped. However, they did manage to run that story into the ground fairly quickly. Nevertheless, other wrestling companies have been chasing the nWo high ever since that group’s debut. No attempt at capitalizing off the nWo, though, was quite as pathetic as The Band.

What was The Band? It was the nWo. Seriously, it was just the nWo. There was Hogan, Nash, Hall, Eric Bischoff...you know...the band. What made this gimmick so awful is that it was clear TNA desperately wanted to use the phrase nWo, but weren’t legally allowed to. Nevertheless, they spent months - literally months - running the exact same nWo storyline they ran in WCW. At one point, the group even split into the Wolfpac. It was an astonishingly lazy example of booking that reminded fans that WCW and WWE were and always will be bigger than TNA.

8 2011 - The New Nexus

via fanpop.com

Hey, TNA gets a one-year break! Good job gang. It’s actually quite appropriate that this gimmick follows The Band as both suffered from the same problem. You may remember that WWE ran a very successful angle in which a group of young wrestlers came together to form “The Nexus.” The Nexus ran roughshod on the WWE roster and destroyed the company’s veteran talent for weeks. They felt like a true force in a way that many factions in WWE in recent years did not. Naturally, then, WWE managed to run the angle into the ground and ruin the story right when it was getting interesting. Then, in their infinite wisdom, they decided to run the Nexus angle yet again with CM Punk as the group’s leader.

The decision to try to salvage the Nexus was mind blowing.

Not only did WWE basically kill the awesome Straight Edge Society just to have Punk lead the group, but it was clear by this point that nobody cared about anyone in the New Nexus that wasn’t named CM Punk. Most people remember this angle as the one that CM Punk was in before he did his pipe bomb promo. What happened to the group after that isn’t worth talking about.

7 2012 - Aces and Eights

aces and eights

There’s probably going to be some debate about this one. After all, some people have some fond memories of the Aces and Eights gimmick. The group debuted in 2012 when some masked men attacked Sting during his TNA Hall of Fame induction. They then sent some threatening letters to Hulk Hogan. So far, so good. Actually, Aces and Eights were the stars of quite a few pretty good moments during their run. The group also found some success by winning multiple championships (Bully Ray even won the Heavyweight Championship). That’s all good, but you might have noticed that the subject has to do with dumb wrestling gimmicks. Well, the more Aces and Eights grew, the more we realized just how awful the idea of a biker gang gimmick for a group of wrestlers was.

First off, none of the wrestlers involved were bikers and none of them were ever associated with motorcycles in any way. As guys like Garett Bischoff joined the group and diluted its status, the idea of a gang of wrestling bikers who had no connection with motorcycles in any way grew dumber and dumber. We get that someone saw Sons of Anarchy and thought “let’s do that” but gimmicks aren’t that easy.

6 2013 - The BroMans

BroMans with the Impact Tag Team Champions

There is a such thing as a wrestling group gimmick that is so bad that it’s actually good. You can have a group that might not be serious contenders, but they can still help to pump up the crowd with a fun/funny gimmick. It’s all about maximizing the potential of every wrestler and every concept. All of this is just a way to help set the stage for what an awful idea the BroMans was. For some reason, wrestling bookers have a habit of capitalizing on pop culture trends years after they are relevant. In the BroMans, TNA was trying to capitalize on the male members of the Jersey Shore.

Now, this gimmick could have worked if it had just been Robbie E (who had been running this gimmick for quite awhile) and Jessie Godderz working as a comedy tag team. However, TNA decided that they should instead book a dudebro faction who were actually supposed to be viewed as a legitimate threat to the roster. That’s where things went too far. The moment that we were asked to take the BroMans seriously is the moment that the idea exhausted all the good will we would have offered it.

5 2014 - The Revolution

via youtube.com

Believe it or not - and we’re guessing you’re going to believe it - there’s a long history of cults in wrestling. Back in the ‘80s a few local promoters got quite a bit of mileage out of the idea that some of the wrestlers on the roster were mixed up in the dark arts. Since then, we’ve had variations on that idea like The Ministry of Darkness, The Wyatt Family, and even Raven’s Flock. Then you have The Revolution. We’re going to be honest with you; we’re not actually sure if this deserves to be on the worst gimmick list because we’re not actually sure what the gimmick here was supposed to be.

It began when James Storm essentially berated and brainwashed The Great Sanata into becoming his follower.

Then Storm - who it should be said had no associations with anything cultlike until this point - began recruiting more members. So far as we can tell, TNA was trying to form their own Wyatt Family with James Storm at the head. The problem was that it was never really clear what the group was trying to accomplish, why there was a dark mystique about them, or why anybody should care.

4 2015 - The League of Nations

League of Nations

You knew this one was coming. As we mentioned before, Vince McMahon and the rest of the WWE creative team have a real thing about booking foreign wrestlers to be foreign and nothing else. Well, if we’re being fair, they have actually toned down on that booking strategy in recent years. That’s why it was so strange to see a group like The League of Nations formed in modern WWE. The League of Nations began not long after Sheamus won the WWE Championship and started to hang around with Wade Barrett, Alberto Del Rio, and Rusev. This group of incredibly talented wrestlers began referring to themselves as The League of Nations because they were all from outside the U.S.

There’s a few things wrong with that idea. First off, this was done in 2015 and not 1985. As such, WWE had to seriously dial back on how much anti-American sentiment the group could say. That’s not a bad thing in and of itself, but it’s just one of the things that raised questions regarding whether or not there was any point to the group. Also, are you really telling us there wasn’t anything better for these four wrestlers to do?

3 2016 - The Social Outcasts

via youtube.com

This one skirts that grey area between funny bad and just awful. Years ago in ECW, there was a faction called the J.O.B. Squad. Their gimmick was that they were a group of jobbers who decided to ban together and try to get wins. It was a great example of how Paul Heyman always found ways to get the most value out of his workers. It was also a way to wink at the fans who knew that there was no way that any of these guys were going to be real stars, but wanted a reason to root for them regardless.

We think that’s what WWE was trying to do with the Social Outcasts. Heath Slater, Bo Dallas, Curtis Axel, and Adam Rose (who was kicked out of the group) were essentially modern-day jobbers without the label. As such, they could have theoretically recreated the J.O.B. Squad’s success.

The problem was that WWE couldn’t really refer to them as jobbers and thus took away the fun of having such a group of performers work together in the first place.

Without that hook, the Social Outcasts floundered and were reduced to some forgettable comedy segments. Oh, and they remained jobbers.

2 2017 - The Welcoming Committee

via pinterest.com

A good faction accomplishes a few things. First and foremost, a faction should allow every wrestler in it to have a chance to shine which they might not have otherwise had on their own. A faction can have a leader, but everyone in the group needs a role. Second, there needs to be a good reason for everyone in the group to be in the group. You can’t just toss some people together and hope that they’ll succeed. Lastly, the faction shouldn’t play second fiddle to any lone superstar. They are a team, and it should take a team to beat them. Remarkably, The Welcoming Committee failed at all of these tasks.

The Welcoming Committee was formed on SmackDown when Charlotte Flair joined the roster. The idea was that the other women on SmackDown (most of them, anyway) wanted to “welcome” Charlotte by beating her up. The idea of devoting an entire faction to just one star is absurd. Why don’t they just all wrestle Charlotte when they get a chance like...you know...normal wrestlers? This should have just been a battle between Natalya and Charlotte. Instead, the formation of this group sent a clear message regarding the hierarchy of the division.

1 2018 - The Riot Squad

via wwe.com

You know, we’ve had a lot of fun here tonight talking about bad gimmicks. From cowboy/Japanese cults to male cheerleaders, there’s no shortage of astonishingly bad wrestling gimmicks out there. Yet, we haven’t really talked much about the worst wrestling gimmick of them all; the non-existent group gimmick.

This is the dreaded gimmick where every wrestler involved is apparently seen as so generic and forgettable that the company doesn’t even really bother to give them a gimmick at all.

They’re just...who knows...wrestlers that hang out on the weekends or something. That’s pretty much what the Riot Squad is. We’re not entirely why, but WWE seem to have a real problem with bringing female wrestlers to the main roster as solo performers. They love to introduce them as a group. Maybe it’s because they don’t think they are talented enough to stand on their own, but this practice typically leads to every member of the group failing to find a way to stand out. That’s exactly what happened with The Riot Squad. We don’t know what their purpose is, why they decided to band together, or why we should care about any of them. That’s about as bad as gimmicks get.