BY MICHAEL GOODPASTER
(FOUR) WEST TEXAS REDNECKS
This group rocked. Anything with Curt Hennig at the front is cool with me. He and a few others all put on jeans and fake cowboy hats and pretty much became the villians you’d see in a Smokey and the Bandit movie. Hell, they even kind of reminded me of the couunry band from “The Blues Brothers” movie. They were over the top and cheesy, but the thing was they made it work. It helped that they were all good wrestlers. And really, to be honest I’m bias to their songs “Gool Ol’ Boys” and the classic “Rap is Crap (I Hate Rap)”. I wish they’d have had time to do some bigger things to expand their run a bit more. It could have been a lot of fun.
(THREE) JUNG DRAGONS
This was a cool group of high flyers. WCW did this one right. The Dragons was Kaz Hayashi, Jimmy Yang, and Jamie Noble. They were basically wrestling ninjas. It was a lot of fun because their characters were unique and they could perform their asses off at this time. The matches they had with the Filthy Animals is still up there with the best cruiser tag stuff I’ve ever seen. They were stuck in the tail end of WCW so they didn’t get much of a chance to flourish. I think if they’d have made it to the WWE they could have made a lot of money.
(TWO) D.O.A.
I always thought this was a cool group. Apparently TNA wrestling agrees because their latest “Aces and Eights” thing is a rip off of this. I know it’s easy to point at the TV show “Sons of Anarchy” and say THAT is the source, but its wrestling. The idea of a “biker gang stable” was done in 1997 in the form of “The Disciples of Apocalypse” or “DOA” for short. The Nation of Domination broke up and Crush went out on his own. He hooked up with Chainz (Brian Lee), and Skull and 8-Ball (The Harris Brothers). They’d all ride custom made Titan motorcycles to the ring and put on that whole image. They had a cool thing going until Crush ditched the company in protest of the Montreal Screw Job. From that point on it fell apart. If he had stayed around I think they could have worked with this a bit more.
(ONE) THE BROOD
This one feels like a given, but I still don’t think this group gets enough love. The whole “spooky goth” thing comes and goes with the trends, but this group stands out. They have been “dark” groups before, but none had the theatrics or talent of this one. They’d enter from below the entrance way through a ring of fire. They’d drink blood from a goblet and pretty much just be creepy vampire types. It was a lot of fun and fit right into world of the WWF at the time. Gangrel was a really solid hand and could have been around longer. For whatever reason, he didn’t last but Edge and Christian did. They wore “puffy shirts” and I would hope that someone would have said “I don’t wanna be a pirate” at least once. If that reference isn’t got, people suck.
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