It's almost the biggest cliché on wrestling message boards to suggest new stables for people or to reminisce about old ones. For whatever reason, the IWC and the larger audience seems to love them. When a stable takes off, they become huge in the t-shirt selling department. However, I actually think that stables are amongst the worst things in wrestling history, and will use this thread to bore you with the details why.
Before I begin, when I say stable, I mean a collective of wrestlers who have a clearly defined structure and who are involved in each other's angles. I'm not including things like the Heenan family, which never really did anything together on a regular basis, and didn't really have a common goal except to be managed by the same man. With that reasonably clear, I'll begin.
1. Stables make lazy booking even easier
My biggest gripe with wrestling has always been when they utilise lazy booking and absolutely nothing achieves as much to help that cause than stables. Stables will often run into a match and just lay waste to their guy's opponent. Sometimes, this is in context, but other times it just leads to a massive cluster fuck that is boring to watch, as just about every Edge title match in 2008 proved. What's even worse is that in some instances, the stable that attacks don't really have any reason for doing so, and the matches are just ended nonsensically. I am all but certain that we will never find out why Nexus attacked The Undertaker, and their absence from videos of Kane winning the buried alive match is quite telling, I think.
It's not just matches that stables compromise the booking of, but entire angles. Again, taking Nexus as an example. What could have been a truly innovative feud that could have galvanised Punk into a much more twisted heel by trying to make Cena seem like he was a bad role model, will instead be replaced with an extension of the Nexus storyline. I'll reserve judgement of the sudden departure of Barrett for a couple of weeks, but it seems absolutely baffling that Nexus have been thrown into that feud for no apparent reason. CM Punk was also on the receiving end of this sort of crap stable booking two year ago when Legacy beat him up, costing him the title, which lead to err.. well... one match on Raw.
This isn't the only kind of lazy booking resulting from stables. There's also the sudden unexplained turn. I cannot begin to even count the amount of times in WCW's decline when the outcome of a match would be determined by someone in a stable turning on the other members. TNA is heading that way at present. All it does is lead to a shit feud that offers a weasel's way out, and its boring. Furthermore it leads to the stupid situation where the initial feud is unresolved, but where there's obviously more business to it. This may happen to Nexus. Wade Barrett is either going to completely ignore the fact that Punk usurped him, or he will have a secondary feud under Punk's with Cena, which won't really work. It's just shitty short term planning.
2. Stables end up contradicting their own agendas, particularly when there's more than one stable in a company
The point of Nexus was supposed to be young wrestlers getting noticed. To do this they attacked CM Punk, a heel, and John Cena, a face. This was quite innovative. 6 months later, Punk has forgiven them, though that may be explained, and is now in the group. So the leader of a group trying to become noticed in opposition to main eventers is now themselves led by an established main eventer. Stupid. However, this could be feasibly explained away, so I shouldn't be too harsh.
Where this point is particularly telling is when you have a few stables. Invariably, as per point 1, there will be a "war" which will consist of several uninteresting Tommy Dreamer vs AJ Styles type feuds. Because having loads of people in stables means you reduce the potential feuds you can have, stables have to turn face or heel or form allegiances far more often. This is why you end up with weird sorts of hybrids, as shown by Immortal and Fortune in TNA now. Flair has been a thorn in Hogan and Bischoff's back since day one, and is clearly supposed to be a bit of a playboy. Now they're bessies for no apparent reason. The better example of this is the Corporate Ministry. The Undertaker spent ages torturing Vince, and even hung Bossman, but then the stables merged to try and flog the dead horse that each stable had become having been decimated by Austin. Needless to say, the Corporate Ministry was not a resounding success.
The problem lies with the fact that once the main figure of a stable is beaten, everyone else in that stable ceases to be a contender to whoever beat them, so either a new super stable is formed, which usually brings in the sorts of contradictions mentioned previously, or the antagonist is left with nobody to fight and loses momentum. An example of the first is Austin. Austin's feud with McMahon probably needed the corporation to exist, but it basically could have been filled with nobodies and "security" as well as The Rock. But they didn't do that, and instead, by the time Austin had beaten The Rock, all of the corporation members beneath him stopped being valid title contenders. Guys like Triple H, Shamrock and Big Show weren't top guys, but could easily have been space fillers, and the Corporate Ministry had to be formed to give Austin a new thing to overcome, and the feud was ultimately not as successful.
An example of the second instance is Ahmed Johnson. He feuded with Faarooq, and couldn't then move on to feud with the members of the other stables because the Nation of Domination was in a race war with them. Short of anyone to fight, he ended up joining the Nation, which absolutely destroyed the remaining momentum he had post injury.
I won't even try to analyse all the contradiction that was involved in the last two years of the nWo angle.
3. Stables tend to kill the lesser members who don't leave them
Stables are essentially vehicles for their bigger stars. As a result, they end up often appearing as nothing but roadblocks in the way of the enemies of their biggest stars. In 2007, Chavo Guerrero was a midcarder. He had a decent reign as a Cruiserweight Champion, and feuded with Rey Mysterio. He then won the ECW title as part of the formation of La Familia. Fast forward a year of him being beaten down by the world and his wife as they try and get to Edge, and you have a man who wrestles a dwarf in a cow suit.
The list of people like this is literally endless, lower card wrestlers go into a stable as respectable midcarders and then leave as Naked Mideon because any credibility they had has been lost from being repeatedly beat down. Kazarian is an example of someone this is happening to at present. He loses almost all of his matches, despite having first joined Fortune as a reasonably over established midcarder.
4. Stables tend to kill the lesser members who do leave them
When lower members leave stables, they inevitably get beaten down, then lose to the leader, then disappear off the face of the earth. For this, let us look once again to Nexus. Of the four members that have left Nexus since its inception - Tarver, Danielson, Sheffield and Young - only Danielson, the one that wasn't really fired at all has been able to do anything at all since. Young has been on TV, losing a lot, Sheffield is injured but Tarver has disappeared off the face of the earth.
Looking back at some of the good stables, we see a similar theme. Orton left Evolution in the best way possible, he even looked like he was on a good path. Then, the inevitable happened and he was out of the main event for three years. Had Batista been the one to go first, I doubt he'd ever have been world champion again, its testament to Orton's reinvention of himself as a psychopath that he was able to rise above the fallout of his exit from Evolution.
5. Stables almost never have a satisfactory conclusion
By the end of a stable, the story has usually become so convoluted and the contradiction so great that there's no logical way to bring it to a conclusion. Even if you look at the stables which began their lives as compelling television, they had a totally shit end. The very best stables ever - nWo, DX, even the stable that arguably avoided most of the shit mentioned previously the Four Horsemen, had totally limp endings. The Main Event Mafia is possibly the best thing TNA ever had creatively, but it ended with a whimper.
I've put "almost" in the title of this section because there might have been one or two that did, but I genuinely cannot think of a single stable that ended in a way that was beneficial to the company.
There's a whole host of other things I hate about them, but that'll have to wait until another day.
Before I begin, when I say stable, I mean a collective of wrestlers who have a clearly defined structure and who are involved in each other's angles. I'm not including things like the Heenan family, which never really did anything together on a regular basis, and didn't really have a common goal except to be managed by the same man. With that reasonably clear, I'll begin.
1. Stables make lazy booking even easier
My biggest gripe with wrestling has always been when they utilise lazy booking and absolutely nothing achieves as much to help that cause than stables. Stables will often run into a match and just lay waste to their guy's opponent. Sometimes, this is in context, but other times it just leads to a massive cluster fuck that is boring to watch, as just about every Edge title match in 2008 proved. What's even worse is that in some instances, the stable that attacks don't really have any reason for doing so, and the matches are just ended nonsensically. I am all but certain that we will never find out why Nexus attacked The Undertaker, and their absence from videos of Kane winning the buried alive match is quite telling, I think.
It's not just matches that stables compromise the booking of, but entire angles. Again, taking Nexus as an example. What could have been a truly innovative feud that could have galvanised Punk into a much more twisted heel by trying to make Cena seem like he was a bad role model, will instead be replaced with an extension of the Nexus storyline. I'll reserve judgement of the sudden departure of Barrett for a couple of weeks, but it seems absolutely baffling that Nexus have been thrown into that feud for no apparent reason. CM Punk was also on the receiving end of this sort of crap stable booking two year ago when Legacy beat him up, costing him the title, which lead to err.. well... one match on Raw.
This isn't the only kind of lazy booking resulting from stables. There's also the sudden unexplained turn. I cannot begin to even count the amount of times in WCW's decline when the outcome of a match would be determined by someone in a stable turning on the other members. TNA is heading that way at present. All it does is lead to a shit feud that offers a weasel's way out, and its boring. Furthermore it leads to the stupid situation where the initial feud is unresolved, but where there's obviously more business to it. This may happen to Nexus. Wade Barrett is either going to completely ignore the fact that Punk usurped him, or he will have a secondary feud under Punk's with Cena, which won't really work. It's just shitty short term planning.
2. Stables end up contradicting their own agendas, particularly when there's more than one stable in a company
The point of Nexus was supposed to be young wrestlers getting noticed. To do this they attacked CM Punk, a heel, and John Cena, a face. This was quite innovative. 6 months later, Punk has forgiven them, though that may be explained, and is now in the group. So the leader of a group trying to become noticed in opposition to main eventers is now themselves led by an established main eventer. Stupid. However, this could be feasibly explained away, so I shouldn't be too harsh.
Where this point is particularly telling is when you have a few stables. Invariably, as per point 1, there will be a "war" which will consist of several uninteresting Tommy Dreamer vs AJ Styles type feuds. Because having loads of people in stables means you reduce the potential feuds you can have, stables have to turn face or heel or form allegiances far more often. This is why you end up with weird sorts of hybrids, as shown by Immortal and Fortune in TNA now. Flair has been a thorn in Hogan and Bischoff's back since day one, and is clearly supposed to be a bit of a playboy. Now they're bessies for no apparent reason. The better example of this is the Corporate Ministry. The Undertaker spent ages torturing Vince, and even hung Bossman, but then the stables merged to try and flog the dead horse that each stable had become having been decimated by Austin. Needless to say, the Corporate Ministry was not a resounding success.
The problem lies with the fact that once the main figure of a stable is beaten, everyone else in that stable ceases to be a contender to whoever beat them, so either a new super stable is formed, which usually brings in the sorts of contradictions mentioned previously, or the antagonist is left with nobody to fight and loses momentum. An example of the first is Austin. Austin's feud with McMahon probably needed the corporation to exist, but it basically could have been filled with nobodies and "security" as well as The Rock. But they didn't do that, and instead, by the time Austin had beaten The Rock, all of the corporation members beneath him stopped being valid title contenders. Guys like Triple H, Shamrock and Big Show weren't top guys, but could easily have been space fillers, and the Corporate Ministry had to be formed to give Austin a new thing to overcome, and the feud was ultimately not as successful.
An example of the second instance is Ahmed Johnson. He feuded with Faarooq, and couldn't then move on to feud with the members of the other stables because the Nation of Domination was in a race war with them. Short of anyone to fight, he ended up joining the Nation, which absolutely destroyed the remaining momentum he had post injury.
I won't even try to analyse all the contradiction that was involved in the last two years of the nWo angle.
3. Stables tend to kill the lesser members who don't leave them
Stables are essentially vehicles for their bigger stars. As a result, they end up often appearing as nothing but roadblocks in the way of the enemies of their biggest stars. In 2007, Chavo Guerrero was a midcarder. He had a decent reign as a Cruiserweight Champion, and feuded with Rey Mysterio. He then won the ECW title as part of the formation of La Familia. Fast forward a year of him being beaten down by the world and his wife as they try and get to Edge, and you have a man who wrestles a dwarf in a cow suit.
The list of people like this is literally endless, lower card wrestlers go into a stable as respectable midcarders and then leave as Naked Mideon because any credibility they had has been lost from being repeatedly beat down. Kazarian is an example of someone this is happening to at present. He loses almost all of his matches, despite having first joined Fortune as a reasonably over established midcarder.
4. Stables tend to kill the lesser members who do leave them
When lower members leave stables, they inevitably get beaten down, then lose to the leader, then disappear off the face of the earth. For this, let us look once again to Nexus. Of the four members that have left Nexus since its inception - Tarver, Danielson, Sheffield and Young - only Danielson, the one that wasn't really fired at all has been able to do anything at all since. Young has been on TV, losing a lot, Sheffield is injured but Tarver has disappeared off the face of the earth.
Looking back at some of the good stables, we see a similar theme. Orton left Evolution in the best way possible, he even looked like he was on a good path. Then, the inevitable happened and he was out of the main event for three years. Had Batista been the one to go first, I doubt he'd ever have been world champion again, its testament to Orton's reinvention of himself as a psychopath that he was able to rise above the fallout of his exit from Evolution.
5. Stables almost never have a satisfactory conclusion
By the end of a stable, the story has usually become so convoluted and the contradiction so great that there's no logical way to bring it to a conclusion. Even if you look at the stables which began their lives as compelling television, they had a totally shit end. The very best stables ever - nWo, DX, even the stable that arguably avoided most of the shit mentioned previously the Four Horsemen, had totally limp endings. The Main Event Mafia is possibly the best thing TNA ever had creatively, but it ended with a whimper.
I've put "almost" in the title of this section because there might have been one or two that did, but I genuinely cannot think of a single stable that ended in a way that was beneficial to the company.
There's a whole host of other things I hate about them, but that'll have to wait until another day.
