Whether it was the Four Horsemen blazing a trail across the Carolinas in the late 1980s, the New World Order and D-Generation X embroiled in the Monday Night Wars of the 1990s, the Shield and the New Day establishing WWE’s modern-day main event scene, or the Bullet Club’s rise in Japan lighting the fuse of a wrestling revolution, factions have long been the lifeblood of pro-wrestling. But where are all the women?
I’ll come back to that question later. First, a brief history lesson.
Factions in Wrestling
A faction (or stable) is a group of wrestlers working together, often with a common cause or objective. The traces go all the way back to the 1920s and 1930s with promoters like the Gold Dust Trio and teams such as The Dusek Riot Squad. However, the concept rose to prominence in the 1970s with Bobby “The Brain” Heenan’s Family in Verne Gagne’s American Wrestling Association and later Jimmy Hart’s First Family in the Memphis-based Continental Wrestling Association.
By the mid-80s, both Heenan and Hart had reprised their families on the bigger stage of the then World Wrestling Federation (WWF). Around the same time, over in Jim Crockett Promotions, Ric Flair, Arn & Ole Anderson, and Tully Blanchard (along with JJ Dillon as their manager) formed the Four Horsemen, one of the most influential factions in wrestling history. While Heenan and Hart’s groups were mostly disparate personalities connected via a shared manager, the Horsemen operated as a unit of like-minded brothers.
The Gold Standard
With their braggadocios interviews and ruthless in-ring tactics, the Horsemen established themselves as the most fearsome group in wrestling. Their violent and bone-breaking feuds with the likes of Dusty Rhodes, Magnum TA, The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, and The Road Warriors set a new bar for faction-based wrestling in the United States, birthing the bloody War Games matches in the process.
The group’s lineup would change several times over the years — the most renowned being when Barry Windham joined in 1988, leading to the Horsemen holding all the major titles in World Championship Wrestling (WCW) — but their impact would be felt for years to come.
The Horsemen became the blueprint for all future factions. Their similar attire, tailor-made suits, four-finger salute, and captivating group promos contributed to a marketable act that drew in audiences from far and wide across several wrestling promotions. While the stable’s members were all talented in their own right, the Horsemen had an undeniable coolness factor that made the faction just as popular and recognizable as its individual performers.
Going International
Of course, factions aren’t exclusive to Western wrestling. While Heenan and Hart shored up their clientele in the late 70s, Mexico’s Universal Wrestling Association began putting its lightweight wrestlers into various trio combinations — most notably Los Misioneros de la Muerte and Los Mosqueteros del Diablo — and pitting them against each other. The popularity of those matches was such that other promoters across Mexico wanted to book the teams, giving rise to the now Lucha Libre staple of trios matches.
In Japan, real-life, behind-the-scenes tensions gave rise to the idea of the “invasion,” a now frequent ethos of the wrestling faction. It started in 1983 when a disgruntled Riki Choshu left New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), turning his back on Tatsumi Fujinami and forming his own stable, Ishin Gundan, which became the basis for rival promotion Japan Pro-Wrestling (JPW). This JPW core would later act as an invading force in an inter-promotional war with All Japan Pro Wrestling.
Choshu’s controversial actions would inspire several factions in the proceeding years, most prominently Heisei Ishingun, which combined wrestlers from NJPW and Wrestle Association R (WAR). This group was a mainstay of the Japanese wrestling scene throughout the 90s, feuding with various main eventers in both NJPW and WAR while also promoting their own shows.
The nWO & DX
The influence of the invasion-focused, cross-promotional-feuding Japanese factions was felt in the U.S. in 1996, when Scott Hall sauntered through the crowd on WCW Nitro, hijacking the show with declarations of “war” and kick-starting the NWO. In fact, former WCW Vice President Eric Bischoff has said his inspiration for the angle came after attending NJPW’s Battle Formation that same year, a show headlined by an inter-promotional NJPW vs. UWFi match.
Like the Four Horsemen before them, the NWO was a marketable unit, complete with hand signals, matching black attire, and an iconic logo. While the group became unwieldy in WCW’s later years, the initial incarnation turned the wrestling world on its head. Again, there was a coolness factor, with fans lapping up the cocky, rebellious rule-breakers as they threatened to take over the industry.
All of the best and most memorable factions share those traits — brash, take-no-crap badasses that dominate the competition and push the envelope. Sure, it’s a sliding scale, but you can see elements of those traits in everyone from The Legion of Doom to The Hart Foundation to DX to the Nation of Domination to Evolution to the Bullet Club to The Shield to the New Day to The Elite, and so on.
Where are all the women?
So, we now come back to the question, where are all the women? All of the factions mentioned above are male-dominated. Yes, a couple of them had female members, though usually acting as valets. But where is the female equivalent of the NWO or The Shield? For a sport that has been around for decades, why have we never had a mainstream all-women faction presented as a main event act in Western wrestling?
And I need to make it clear, I’m explicitly talking about Western wrestling here. Japan has been at the forefront of women’s wrestling for years. The country’s trend-setting Joshi competitors have influenced modern-day pro-wrestling worldwide, from move-sets to match styles to ring attire. Factions have long been a part of Japan’s wrestling culture. The kendo-stick-swinging Gokuaku Domei dominated All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling in the mid-80s, proving to be crowd favorites with their vicious team tactics.
Gokuaku Domei’s influence is seen today in many Japanese women’s promotions, which operate under the same unit-based format as the men’s promotions. A company like Stardom is built around faction warfare; each roster member is associated with a specific unit, with defections and lineup changes happening yearly. Each stable has its own unique style and aesthetic, from the colorful ass- kickers of the Cosmic Angels to the dark and brooding Oedo Tai to the strong and regal Queen’s Quest to the bright and cheerful Stars to the more serious and charismatic Donna del Mondo.
Sadly, badass female factions are one aspect of Japanese women’s wrestling that hasn’t translated to the West. Now, I’m not saying Western wrestling has never had an all-female faction. There is literally a women’s faction right now on NXT 2.0 — the brilliantly named Toxic Attraction. However, this group shares many of the same issues as mainstream Western women’s factions of the past. It’s another “mean girls” stable primarily centered around looks and sex appeal (as a recent boner joke-heavy episode of NXT can attest).
The Four Horsewomen
There’s nothing inherently wrong with highlighting looks and sex appeal; after all, wrestling is such an image-focused business. However, the “beautiful but conceited mean girls” is such a tired wrestling trope at this point. It’s a far cry from a female version of The Shield or NWO, and it’s certainly nothing on the level of the black-clad, skull-and-crossbones flag-waving ass-whoopers of Gokuaku Domei or the evil hi-jinx of Stardom’s Oedo Tai. I’m also aware of the history of the Four Horsewomen — the name given to Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks, and Bayley. This foursome changed what mainstream women’s wrestling meant during their time in NXT, consistently putting on incredible matches in front of sold-out crowds. All four have since become cornerstones of the WWE. But they’ve never been presented as an official, on-screen faction.
Instead, the Horsewomen moniker was more about their behind-the- scenes contributions to the business. The WWE has never given serious attention to women’s factions, though it only started treating women’s wrestling as a whole with the respect it deserved around 2015. The company’s past attempts at female groups include the Pretty Mean Sisters (abbreviated to PMS, because I guess menstruation is hilarious?), Vince’s Devils, and Extreme Expose, the former mostly revolving around Vince McMahon’s ego and Playboy cover shoots and the latter nothing more than a titillating dance act.
Women’s Revolution
Since the self-branded “Women’s Revolution” in 2015, the WWE has had a few goes at more serious women’s factions. But, like its languishing women’s tag team division, this often involved randomly thrown together wrestlers in undercooked storylines and matches. This included the likes of Team PCB, Absolution, and Team B.A.D., all of which had stop-and-start pushes before being disbanded within less than a year.
The biggest missed opportunity was the Riott Squad, a trio that could have fit quite easily into the cool, rebellious badasses mold if presented better. Instead, the group fell victim to WWE’s frustrating yo-yo booking before being broken up, reformed, and ultimately killed dead when two of its members were released from the company.
Before moving on, I must credit Impact Wrestling for at least treating women’s factions as a regular part of the show. They weren’t a random experiment shoved onto TV with no rhyme or reason behind it. Groups like The Beautiful People, The Queen’s Court, and The Dollhouse were involved in significant storylines and weren’t just dropped after a couple of months. Though, again, these groups fell into the “mean girls” category, mostly based around looks or soap-opera theatrics.
The American indie scene has also been doing great work in regards to women’s factions; all- women promotions like SHINE and SHIMMER have been at the forefront of this for years with groups like Valkyrie. This is where you can see female stables presented similarly to the popular male factions or Japanese women’s units. In recent years, LuFisto’s C4 and Ivelisse’s Las Sicarias are the types of women’s factions it would be refreshing to see on mainstream televised wrestling.
Looking ahead
So, are we ever going to see one of the major TV wrestling companies in the U.S. go all-in with a women’s faction? If there was ever a time to do it, it’s now. Never has there been this many high profile and talented female free agents on the market at the same time. That’s why I point to All Elite Wrestling (AEW) to make it happen. AEW is a company always on the lookout for new signings while also needing those final pieces to bolster its growing women’s division. A badass women’s faction could be a game-changer not only for AEW but for wrestling as a whole.
To AEW’s credit, it attempted a female faction during the early days of Dynamite with the much- maligned Nightmare Collective. Unfortunately, the group just didn’t click, due in part to an ill-timed and confusing Brandi Rhodes heel turn, an injury-wracked Awesome Kong, and a bunch of spooky bollocks that didn’t fit into AEW’s overall product. But it showed the desire for a women’s faction existed, and I believe those desires still exist, as seen with Dr. Britt Baker’s crew, though I view that more as a World Champion and her lackeys rather than a legit faction.
As I said, if there was ever a time to try again, it’s right now in 2022. The market is currently flooded with incredible, top-level women wrestlers, including Athena (the former Ember Moon), Nixon Newell (the former Tegan Nox), Toni Storm, Mia Yim, and Taya Valkyrie. Those are five experienced pros with name-value that could make an immediate impact as an invading unit. It also makes sense. AEW is a promotion that thrives on factions; it’s gang warfare where everybody needs back-up. So why wouldn’t the women adopt this mentality too?
Instead of debuting these stars individually and risking losing them in the shuffle, why not introduce them as a group? Give them the matching attire and cool logo and custom hand gestures. Have them dominate like The Shield. Let them wreak havoc and destroy the set like an NWO or a Nexus. And don’t just restrict them to the women’s division. Use them as a main attraction of the show. Have them interact with the top male talent. We’ve often seen women used in side-plots to men’s storylines. How about trying it the other way around for a change?
In a 2021 interview on Sunday Night’s Main Event, Chris Jericho spoke of AEW owner Tony Khan’s affection for factions. “I think he likes having the factions, and here’s the real reason why… I think he likes having people involved,” Jericho explained. “Everybody on our show has a purpose and a point, and I would never suggest that someone doesn’t get TV time. So when you put together [factions]… they’re getting TV time, and they’re on the show, which they wouldn’t be if they weren’t involved in this faction.”
Those are the benefits of wrestling factions, and it’s done wonders for many of the male talents on the AEW roster. Now it’s time to let the women’s division feel those benefits too. In an industry where almost everything has already been done, do something original. Take those tried and trusted methods that catapulted numerous men’s factions to the top of the wrestling business and apply them to the women. You never know; it might just change the world.