Some of you may have been expecting something different so let me explain myself. My original intention was to continue the "Skip Rogers" story and in fact I wrote and planned out a decent part of that before I started having a change of thought. Bottom line there is that as much as I like doing Skip columns what keeps them being fun is me keeping them as an alternative to my regular body of work. Thus making Skip columns part of my regular body of work would kind of defeat the purpose. That being said I fully intend to continue the story, I just think I'm going to do it at a slower pace then I had originally intended. Instead I will release something more along the lines of your standard column in terms of topic.
You see, my collaboration with Skittlez got me doing a lot of reminiscing about several different things. Not only did I start to think about the older days of wrestling but also the early days of me writing a column. Which brought me to thinking about the second "column" I ever wrote that was about stables. Of course in classic "n00b" fashion my column sucked and came off more as a random rant than a column but that's neither here nor there. While I may not have the original column to use as an outline, I do remember enough about it's basic premise to have a re-do. So let's dive right into this thing, can't be any worse than my first attempt at this 7 years ago.
The Dangerous Alliance
Maybe I'm just biased seeing as the first pay-per-view I ever saw live (Halloween Havoc 91) planted the seeds for this group but it also doesn't hurt things that two of my favorite wrestlers of all-time happened to be featured stars of the group. The early setup of this group was simple, Paul E. Dangerously (aka Paul Heyman) had gotten "fired" from his position as a WCW commentator. He was supposedly too controversial and had to be let go. However Dangerously would find a loophole and even though he had lost his job as a commentator he had retained his managing license. This would set up the story of Paul setting out to seek revenge on the company that fired him.
Fast forward to the pre-show for Halloween Havoc and Arn Anderson and Larry Zybskyo jumped Barry Windham and slammed his hand in his car door "breaking" his hand in a very Horsemen like maneuver. The seeds for the stable were further planted later on when Paul E. introduced the infamous Halloween Phantom to take on "The Z-Man" Tom Zenk. The match was your standard squash bout but the biggest news of the bout was the way in which it ended. As the Phantom gained the upper hand he finished off his opponent with the "Rude Awakening". Though somewhat obvious at this point, the Phantom would unmask following the match and reveal himself to be Ravishing Rick Rude. It was at this moment that Dangerously would reveal to the world that Rude was part of his plan to get back at WCW.
Move ahead to Clash of the Champions the following month and Sting who had been injured earlier in the night but Lex Luger would lose his United States title to Rude. Now the chips started to fall into place and the Dangerous Alliance would be formed. The members would consist of Dangerously as the manager, Rude as the leader, Arn Anderson and Bobby Eaton as the tag team specialists, Stunning Steve Austin as the rising star, Larry Zybysko as the veteran and Madusa as the valet.
All the pieces for greatness were in place for this group and they truly ran over the faces of WCW for roughly a year, taking down the likes of Sting, Ricky Steamboat, Dustin Rhodes, Barry Windham, and Nikita Koloff. Unfortunately this stable would ultimately suffer from mismanagement in the long run and fade out far too soon. While they did manage to stick around a little longer following kicking Larry Zybysko out of the group, that move would ultimately start their downward spiral.
Not only was this group's time way too short I honestly think the overall talent of the group was vastly under appreciated. While Rude had made quite the name for himself in WWF, his WCW run would be what really won me over. His work in and out of the Dangerous Alliance was nothing short of awesome. Then you have Anderson and Eaton whom I'm grouping together mainly because of the fact that they teamed together so often. On one hand you had a legendary member of the Four Horsemen and the Andersons and on the other you had one half of one of the best heel tag teams in the 80's with Bobby Eaton. Not to mention that the duo worked extremely well together and seemed to show great chemistry in the ring. Then you have a young Steve Austin who was one of the best technical guys (believe it or not) at the time and quite the rising star thanks to a couple of great stints as television champ. Last but not least you had the AWA legend Larry Zybysko who like Anderson was an old school brawler.
As far as the makeup of the stable I thought these guys were about as perfect as it gets. You had most aspects of wrestling covered with your different styles represented within the group and at the same time didn't suffer from having far too many members. In fact, I'd say that the perfect amount of active wrestlers for a stable would be 3-5. It just seems like when you have more than five it gets to be hard to give everyone time in the spotlight. Some may argue that Zybysko was the odd man out but I felt that he fit in well with Eaton and Anderson and was interchangeable within the tag team. While Eaton and Anderson delivered a little more diversity, the duo of Anderson and Zybysko was somewhat of a throwback to the sheer viciousness of Ole and Arn.
Such a shame that so many wrestling fans will never get to know such an awesome part of WCW history. In fact, Vince needs to get a stables DVD out like the upcoming tag team DVD and pronto.
Degeration X
Lovers of dick and fart jokes everywhere creamed there jeans over this stable. Who could blame them, as the original incantation of this group involved one of the best wrestlers of our generation in HBK. Then you had Triple H whose stock was really on the rise at the time. Add in RIck Rude (unfortunately in a non-wrestling capacity) and She-Man and you had quite the faction. One of the reasons that the original incarnation of this stable worked so well had to do with their real life friendship. When you have people who know each other inside and outside of the ring it's easy to work together since the trust factor is so high. All it took was a chair shot to the Undertaker that turned HBK heel and a pairing on the UK pay-per-view to kick start Before that their paths had briefly crossed on screen but mainly only because they had common enemies. It would be another month though before they were officially given the name of Degeneration X.
The name would come in part thanks to comments Bret Hart made calling the group nothing but a group of Degenerates. It was at this time that the ever so popular and kid friendly catch phrase of "Suck It" was born. Got to love the Attitude Era, only during this time could you see kids wearing shirts to school the more or less meant "suck my dick." That's neither here nor there though, the true story was the Hart Foundation/Degeneration X feud. A feud that not only played upon the real life heat between the two top stars in Bret and Shawn but also a feud that had major implications involved. While I could sit here and go into epic detail about the Montreal Screw job for the 1,000 time I won't bore you with details. Bottom line, HBK walked out champion and Bret Hart left to go to WCW, not to mention Vince McMahon got himself a black eye.
The stable would go strong in it's original incarnation (minus Rick Rude) for quite a few more months until they were forced to come face to face with another hell raiser in the form of Stone Cold Steve Austin. On one side of the coin you had the showstopper and leader of the anti-establishment faction known as D-X and on the other side you had Austin who was pretty much anti-everything and lived by the motto of "don't trust anyone." Following a stunner and a match that was painful to watch (Shawn had a legit back injury and would "retire" for years) we had a new champion and were about to usher in a new era of D-X.
The second incarnation of D-X was good too and with Hunter leading and the constant humerus skits it became nearly impossible to keep the group as heels. With HBK having to retire the group would realign with Triple H as the new leader, long time friend and Kliq member X-Pac, as well as the upcoming tag team the New Age Outlaws. So weird to think that one half of the Smoking Guns and The Roadie would form such a great tag team. With the additions the faction would now resemble a more traditional stable as opposed to having only two active wrestlers.
The group would manage a pretty impressive run up until Chyna and Hunter joined the Corporation, and Billy Gunn wanted a run at being a solo star. Needless to say the X-Pac, Roaddogg, and Kane version of D-X is one I refuse to talk about. Nowadays it's more of a one off novelty act then anything but it's always good to take a trip down memory lane.
The Four Horsemen
Now, I'm not even going to remotely do this faction the justice it deserves for multiple reasons. One being that I missed some of the early days, and two I could write multiple columns just on the history of this group alone, so bear with my abbreviated history lesson here. With members that included in one way shape or form the following: Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Ole Anderson, J.J. Dillon, Tully Blanchard, Lex Luger, Sting, Barry Windham, Sid Vicious, Paul Roma, Brian Pillman, Steve McMichael, Jeff Jarrett, Curt Hennig, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, and maybe even more I'm forgetting; it's hard to not realize just how legendary this group was. They ran off and on from 1986 all the way until 1999, that's 13 years of domination. No other stable in the wrestling business can boast that type of longevity.
Throughout the years the group has tried it's hand at both the face side of things as well as the heel side of things. The face side just never did much for me though, I mean these were guys who you were supposed to hate. For instance the leader of the group was nicknamed "the dirtiest player in the game" so how can you cheer for this guy. Plus the Andersons just looked like shady guys that wouldn't hesitate to beat your ass. That's what made the Horsemen so great though, they were the first major heel group to do whatever it took to get the job done. The sheer number of bones those guys "broke" to put a face out of action is off the charts.
The face side just came off as silly. Nobody wanted to see Sting and the Horsemen teaming up, the people wanted to see Flair and company beating the brakes off the guy. Don't even get me started on "A Flair for the Gold", outside of the brief feud with the Hollywood Blondes that did nothing for me. Ric Flair doing interviews with Arn Anderson sipping on coffee was just sickening. Arn should have been out breaking coffee mugs over people's heads while Flair was out there delivering the goods in a wrestling promo.
Honestly of all the later incarnations the best had to be Flair, Arn, Pillman and Benoit that was just a sick stable. You had the leader, the bruiser, the crazy man and the technician. They seemed to personify the spirit of the old group the best before getting lost in the shuffle due to the clusterfuck of them joining forces with the Dungeon of Doom (I'll get to them). It really did nothing for anybody and when it turned into a Dungeon of Doom vs Horsemen feud it just became worse. At least we got some epic ass beatings delivered to Kevin Sullivan at the hands of Chris Benoit.
At the end of the day, there will never be a group like this. Evolution wanted to be the Horsemen so bad they could taste it but it's just one of those groups that can never be duplicated. While I'm sure it didn't hurt manners that the group was headlined by one of the best wrestlers of all time in Ric Flair, the chemistry the group had even with the constant lineup changes was unlike anything that we'll ever see again. These guys weren't as much about selling shirts (well ok, you got me they did sell a shirt later on) or about catch phrases (again you got me) as they were about performing in the ring. To look at the original members they all just looked like your best friend's uncle but something about them just drew you in. You either loved them or loved to hate them but either way it was impossible to not care.
Final Thoughts
Well that's gonna do it for this time out, and this is just the first part of an ongoing series for the moment. Whereas this time I decided to focus on a few of my favorite stables, next time I got to go the opposite route. So hopefully you'll come back again, but in the meantime this is where we must part.
As always I am Dr. Monkey, and you've just seen the world through my eyes.
Please send all feedback to monkeyweasel9821@yahoo.com
