10 Worst WWE Factions In History

Stables, groups, factions are supposed to be forces to be reckoned with in WWE and to their credit,  the company has been responsible for some of the best in the history of the business.

When they get it right, they really get it right. But when they get it wrong? Well.

Rather than careers being made and legacies forged, being involved in one of WWE’s very bad stables can be the undoing of some performers or else linger as a (metaphorical) steel chair to beat them over the head with.

These are the 10 Worst WWE Factions.

10. The League of Nations

On paper, a faction featuring Sheamus, Rusev, Wade Barrett and Alberto Del Rio isn’t half-bad. It’s just a quarter bad, with Del Rio being that quarter.

The League of Nations took four of WWE’s dependable internationals and banded them together to spread anti-American sentiment.

So just what happens when an Englishman, an Irishman, a Bulgarian and a Mexican walk into a wrestling ring together? A whole lot of nothing, sadly, as the League of Nations seemed to exist for one primary reason, which was to assist in Operation: Get Roman Reigns Over.

Amazingly, grouping them together managed to collectively lower the value of everyone involved as the League of Nations had no clear purpose, no credibility and the four men in the group were unhappy with their creative direction (or lack thereof).

Sheamus, Barrett, Rusev and Del Rio have all since been outspoken about their frustration and disappointment with their six-month alliance and – as far as their WWE runs are concerned, anyway – only the Celtic Warrior ever truly recovered from it.

9. The Cabinet

Saddled with the stigma of being a career (mostly babyface) midcarder, JBL needed all the help he could get to establish himself as a top-line heel when he was thrust into the position in 2004.

The shocking angles, heated promos, feud and subsequent WWE Title victory over Eddie Guerrero certainly helped legitimise him, and we’re sure WWE probably thought that making him the leader of his own stable would only enhance his reputation further.

And so ‘President’ JBL assembled his ‘Cabinet’ – adding Chief of Staff Orlando Jordan, Co-Secretaries of Defence the Basham Brothers and Image Consultant Amy Weber.

The Cabinet acted as warm bodies to be beaten up by the babyfaces trying to get their hands on the champ, but OJ, Doug, Danny and Amy weren’t exactly over with the audience and their matches and segments routinely fell really flat.

They accomplished next to nothing before gradually disbanding, with Weber quitting IRL after just a few months on the road and the Bashams kayfabe handing in their notice not too long after.

By that point, JBL had lost the strap and so it was basically just him and Orlando, with ‘fixer’ Jillian Hall temporarily added to the mix before the whole thing was scrapped altogether.

8. Mean Street Posse

The idea of a group of Shane McMahon’s buddies from the ‘mean streets of Greenwich, Connecticut’ wrestling in sweater vests and slacks was a funny one. To start with, anyway.

Two-thirds of the so-called Mean Street Posse – Pete Gas and Rodney – were legitimate buddies with the boss’s son, while the other member, Joey Abs, was a former enhancement talent and the only one with any actual in-ring experience.

The Posse originally had a couple of other members (Willie Green and Billy P), before they were whittled down to a three.

Mostly used in backstage segments or to run interference for Shane, the Posse wrestled the occasional, mostly awful match, one of which (against Stooges Patterson and Brisco) is, inexplicably, one of the most-viewed matches in the history of Raw.

The Posse’s collective lack of training meant that their matches were mostly rotten and they didn’t seem to have much reason for existing once they split from McMahon, mostly being used as punching bags or Hardcore Title fodder.

WWE evidently didn’t see much of a future for them, since they were shipped off to developmental league Memphis Championship Wrestling in late 2000, never to return.

7. The Mexicools

In theory, an invading cruiserweight group consisting of Juventud Guerrera, Super Crazy and Psicosis should have been a sure-fire winner.

After all, the three luchadors were all ultra-talented and their addition to the SmackDown roster in 2005 was a shot in the arm to a division that was thin on the ground and creatively neglected.

However, WWE’s decision to have the Mexicools ride to the ring on lawnmowers raised some eyebrows due to it being a racist stereotype and deeply offensive to a sizeable portion of the show’s audience.

The Mexicools claimed that they were no longer going to do the manual labour that Hispanics were expected to do for ‘gringos’ and began their WWE careers by interfering in matches by attacking other wrestlers.

Their run got off to a pretty disastrous start when Juventud smashed in Paul London’s face with a  botched 450 Splash, leading to Vince McMahon outlawing it and other high-risk moves like the Shooting Star Press.

Their matches were also underwhelming and, though Guerrera bagged the Cruiserweight Title, he alienated himself from the locker room with his characteristically annoying and erratic backstage behaviour.

Juvi soon lost the title and was released just six months after the Mexicools’ debut, after which Crazy and Psicosis became a more palatable tag team.

6. The Truth Commission

Starting life in the Memphis-based USWA territory, the Truth Commission was first managed by an actor Bret Hart had met in South Africa, though he was quickly replaced by The Jackyl when the group of militias made its way to WWE TV.

Part of 1997’s Gang Warz storyline, their presence meant endless matches with the Nation of Domination, DOA and Los Boricuas, but the Truth Commission didn’t have a compelling mission statement, nor the wrestling skill to make up for poor creative.

Tank left the stable early on, leaving The Interrogator, Recon and Sniper to do the heavy lifting. The focus was clearly on making Kurrgan a monster heel and the other two were basically bump dummies in green t-shirts and red hats.

The matches were boring, the storylines were practically non-existent and nobody was upset or cared, or even noticed when the Truth Commission went away.

5. The Social Outcasts

Sometimes stables are simply thrown together to give hardworking but directionless members of the roster something to do.

On occasion, this can work out great and lead to career revivals. The Social Outcasts was not one of these occasions.

On the first Raw of 2016, Heath Slater introduced his newest stable since the dissolution of Three Man Band, revealing a coalition with Bo Dallas, Curtis Axel and Adam Rose.

Every member was a dependable, lower mid-card guy who had experienced stop-and-stop pushes and had come together to collectively reach for that elusive brass ring.

Spoiler: they didn’t reach it, but they did have t-shirts with their group name and a hashtag on it.

The Social Outcasts did much of nothing, starting as heels before turning babyface and gradually falling apart, starting with Rose’s suspension and inevitable release.

The group were never going to be world-beaters, of course, but their seven-month existence yielded few highlights and failed to significantly elevate anyone involved.

4. Pretty Mean Sisters

If you thought the Mean Street Posse were bad, wait until we dive into PMS, another of WWE’s stable misfires circa ‘99.

PMS stood for ‘Pretty Mean Sisters’, a group of scorned women who targeted the roster’s menfolk. Of course, it was actually an allusion to pre-menstrual stress, because the man behind the concept was Vince Russo.

Made up of Terri Runnels, Jacqueline and, in time, Ryan Shamrock, the ‘Sisters’ were involved in some of the worst storylines of the Attitude Era during their brief existence, including Terri’s faked miscarriage.

There would have been worse to come in the form of a Shamrock brother-sister romance, had Ken not refused shortly before Ryan was released.

By that point, PMS had added the hapless Shawn ‘Meat’ Stasiak as the group’s love slave, who in the storyline got pasted in his matches because he was so knackered after being forced to fulfil the needs of his horny masters.

Eventually, Jacqueline got fed up with Terri wearing out and mistreating Meat, the tipping point arriving when Runnels forced Stasiak to kiss her foot following a loss to Edge on Sunday Night Heat, signalling the end of the group.

3. The Corre

The Nexus was a great idea that started well and led to some fantastic television (at least initially). Handled correctly, they could have been one of the greatest stables of all time and their main members could have become main event-level stars.

Nexus, however, wasn’t handled correctly and fizzled out after several months of irredeemable booking.

CM Punk took over the reins of the black-and-yellow group, kicking out Barrett, Slater and Gabriel and forming the New Nexus, while the exiled members hooked up with former ECW Champion Ezekiel Jackson to form The Corre.

We can see the sense in trying to give the four of them something to do, but the whole concept of the Corre – if you can even call it a concept – felt like it was scribbled down on a fast food napkin and handed to Wade and the boys five minutes before their first promo together.

Incredibly, the Corre managed to snatch the tag team and Intercontinental titles, but if you want to know how successful they really were, check out their 90-second loss at WrestleMania 27.

2. The Union

The only Union you’re likely to ever see in a WWE locker room is the one that was made up of Mankind, Big Show, Ken Shamrock and Test in May of 1999.

The Union – or to give them their full title the Union of People You Oughta Respect, Son, AKA U.P.Y.O.R.S, because it’s Vince Russo’s world we’re living in and everything is a forced pun - were a short-lived offshoot of the Corporation.

The foursome abandoned the Corporation after Shane McMahon wrangled power away from his father and began to treat certain members badly.

The Union were sort of aligned with other heavy hitters, including Mr. McMahon, Steve Austin, The Rock and commissioner Shawn Michaels, and battled the Corporate Ministry (after The Undertaker’s satanic outfit merged with Shane’s crew).

This all led to a Union versus Corporate Ministry eight-man elimination tag match at the ill-fated Over the Edge, which was won by Mankind.

Eight days later, Mrs. Foley’s Baby Boy was written off television in order to get knee surgery.

One week after that, Vince McMahon was revealed as the Higher Power and, with their leader on the shelf and their enemy morphing into a confusing mess, the Union turned in their two-by-fours and went their separate ways.

1. Retribution

The pandemic era was an unprecedented time for WWE, one of the very few sports or entertainment enterprises that kept running throughout.

The lack of a live crowd and absence of key personnel led to some interesting creative choices. ‘Interesting’, unfortunately, is not something that the Retribution stable could be accused of being.

Like Nexus before them, Retribution were dismayed at the WWE system and wanted to take it down from within, causing property damage and attacking people at random like a bunch of masked ASBOs.

None of it felt right from the off, with the stable’s stupid outfits and slapdash names, it was all positively rotten,

WWE and the members of Retribution – that’s Mustafa Ali, Mace, T-Bar, Reckoning, Retaliation and Slapjack – ought to be thankful this sorry episode took place away from packed arenas.