A Numbers Game: The Most Successful Stable in Wrestling

Jamie Lithgow

 

It would be very easy and very unimaginative of me to just make a list of who I think the most successful stables in wrestling are; which is why I am not going to do that. Instead I have attempted to determine wrestling’s most successful stable, mathematically.

 

As a fan I can only calculate success through my eyes and success to a wrestling fan is not determined by how many Twitter followers one has or how much money one makes from merchandise sales. Success in wrestling, as far as fans are concerned, is the winning and retaining of championships. This rather simple notion will form the basis for my calculations.

 

The Equation

 

Firstly I have established the number of days that the members of the following stables held various championships for. Obviously if a wrestler’s title reign overlapped their membership of the group only their time as a member is counted. I have added these reigns together to give each stable their total title reigns.

 

I have counted the total members of each stable. Only wrestlers were counted. Valets, managers, bodyguards etc. have not been considered as they are non-competing members.

 

I have also established the lifespan of each stable, again in days. This is from the point that they were recognised as a group to the point they disbanded. A few of the stables disbanded only to reform at a later date and I have acknowledged these gaps. The lifespan of each stable is the number of days that they were an active group.

 

With the above information I can calculate the number of championships held per wrestler per day for each stable. However, because a stable is a team then the more people contributing to that team the stronger it is. For that reason I have established the number of wrestlers from each stable to win a championship. This number of title holders will multiply the figure for championships per wrestler per day to give a Stable Success Score. If that’s hard to follow then here is what I have just said as an equation –

 

Stable Success Score = (total title reigns/members/lifespan) x title holders

 

The Criteria

There have obviously been a lot of stables in the wide word of wrestling over the years so I shall need to narrow the field. Below is the criteria for making the list –

• Only stables from WWE or WCW/JCP have been considered. To find the most successful stables I have to concentrate on the most successful promotions with the most prestigious championships.
• Only stables that have counted a reigning world champion as a member have been considered.
• By stable I mean a group of three or more wrestlers. However, I have made an exception for the first incarnation of Degeneration-X, even though technically speaking it consisted of just two wrestlers with two bodyguards.

 

The Contenders

The Four Horsemen

Members	Lifespan	World Title reigns	Total Title reigns	World Champions	Title Holders
15	2603 days	1380 days	2849 days	1	9

Everyone knows Ric Flair dominated the NWA World Title; however the other horsemen pulled their weight too. Arn Anderson managed to hold onto the Television Title for more than 700 days over three reigns. They were around for an awful long time after their peak though.

 The nWo

Members	Lifespan	World Title reigns	Total Title reigns	World Champions	Title Holders
31	1468 days	818 days	2077 days	4	15

Home to four separate WCW Champions! With that said it was also home to a lot of dead weight too. For the record I have not distinguished between Wolfpac and Hollywood factions because both groups were still technically part of the nWo, 4 Life brother!

 The Corporation

Members	Lifespan	World Title reigns	Total Title reigns	World Champions	Title Holders
12	165 days	86 days	277 days	1	4

The Rock clocked up three WWE Title reigns during his time on the Corporate Team. Ken Shamrock also helped out by becoming a double champion; he held the Intercontinental Title while also holding the Tag Titles with The Bossman.

 The Corporate Ministry

Members	Lifespan	World Title reigns	Total Title reigns	World Champions	Title Holders
11	89 days	36 days	105 days	1	4

Not only does The Corporation make the list but the group that it transformed into is also worthy due to The Undertakers brief run with the WWE title in ’99.

 The Magnificent Seven

Members	Lifespan	World Title reigns	Total Title reigns	World Champions	Title Holders
7	67 days	67 days	108 days	1	2

Formed in the dying days of WCW it’s no surprise that most people don’t remember this stable. Despite being far from memorable Scott Steiner did hold the WCW Title for the entire lifespan of the group.

 Degeneration-X

Members	Lifespan	World Title reigns	Total Title reigns	World Champions	Title Holders
5	824 days	293 days	1106 days	2	5

They held every championship possible with each member capturing at least two titles. Impressive stuff, although some of those title reigns were quite short. Note that I’ve not accounted for the 2006-2010 version of DX; they were a tag-team.

 The Hart Foundation

Members	Lifespan	World Title reigns	Total Title reigns	World Champions	Title Holders
5	224 days	98 days	493 days	1	3

Bret Hart held The WWE Title but the reason for these impressive stats is Owen Hart and The British Bulldog. They held the Intercontinental and European Championships respectively while at the same time also being the Tag-Team Champions. Note, the original Hart Foundation have not been accounted for as they were strictly a tag-team.

 La Familia

Members	Lifespan	World Title reigns	Total Title reigns	World Champions	Title Holders
5	238 days	134 days	253 days	1	4

With Edge’s World Heavyweight Championship reigns, Chavo Guerrero’s ECW Title reign and Hawkins and Ryder’s Tag-Team Title run La Familia have more to shout about than you might think.

 The Cabinet

Members	Lifespan	World Title reigns	Total Title reigns	World Champions	Title Holders
4	316 days	242 days	390 days	1	4

Like La Familia you probably hadn’t considered this lot either. JBL’s mammoth WWE Title reign, Orlando Jordan’s lengthy US Title run and The Bashams tag title win justifies their inclusion though.

 The New Blood

Members	Lifespan	World Title reigns	Total Title reigns	World Champions	Title Holders
34	91 days	70 days	323 days	2	13

A decent idea in theory, terrible in practice: That pretty much sums up this desperate attempt to save WCW in 2000. The stats for these guys are very impressive because this stable consisted of more than half the WCW roster and the booking was also very biased towards getting them over too.

 The Millionaire’s Club

Members	Lifespan	World Title reigns	Total Title reigns	World Champions	Title Holders
12	91 days	14 days	29 days	3	6

Enemies of The New Blood, this smaller faction consisted of WCW’s old guard. Their stats aren’t quite so impressive because, as you can see, The New Blood controlled most of the titles at this time.

 The Heenan Family

Members	Lifespan	World Title reigns	Total Title reigns	World Champions	Title Holders
19	2465 days	0 days	654 days	1	5

Some odd numbers here because The Heenan Family only just fulfil the criteria. Andre The Giant did win the WWE Title, however he sold it to Ted DiBiase immediately after the match. Technically this does leave Heenan’s men with a world champion within their ranks, albeit with a very short reign.

 The Alliance

Members	Lifespan	World Title reigns	Total Title reigns	World Champions	Title Holders
33	133 days	154 days	688 days	2	16

Were they a stable or were they a pseudo wrestling promotion? Their aims and purpose were the same as the nWo, so if I include one I have to include the other. Not only did they have an immense weight of numbers but they also had double the amount of titles to fight for.

 The Dungeon of Doom

Members	Lifespan	World Title reigns	Total Title reigns	World Champions	Title Holders
18	785 days	118 days	233 days	1	3

You wouldn’t normally associate success with The Dungeon of Doom but The Giant (aka The Big Show) did capture the WCW Title a couple of times to make them a contender.

 Evolution

Members	Lifespan	World Title reigns	Total Title reigns	World Champions	Title Holders
4	750 days	452 days	726 days	2	4

All four members are now multi time world champions, but how did they do at the time? Well, not too shabby. All members captured at least one championship and they controlled the World Heavyweight Championship for most of the time they existed, although 451 of the 452 days did belong to Triple H.

 Legacy

Members	Lifespan	World Title reigns	Total Title reigns	World Champions	Title Holders
3	414 days	153 days	153 days	1	1

Not the best looking figures, but then again there was only three of them. From these stats you would think that Legacy was less a stable and more Randy Orton and his two lackeys, and you would be right.

 

The Results

Stable	Stable Success Score
The Alliance The New Blood Degeneration-X The Hart Foundation The Cabinet Evolution La Familia nWo The 4 Horsemen The Corporation The Magnificent 7 The Corporate Ministry The Millionaire’s Club Legacy The Heenan Family The Dungeon of Doom	2.5081 1.3571 1.3422 1.3205 1.2342 0.9680 0.8504 0.6846 0.6567 0.5596 0.4606 0.4290 0.1593 0.1232 0.0698 0.0495

 

Rather predictably The Alliance has walked away with the title of Most Successful Stable in Wrestling with almost twice the score of the second placed New Blood. However, it is worth noting that The Alliance did have both WWE and WCW titles to fight for. So with twice the titles to fight for it wouldn’t be too unjustified to halve their score; but even then they would still rank a very impressive fourth. The New Blood should also have an asterisk next to their name because the direction that WCW was trying to take at the time skewed the booking firmly in their favour. Plus, more than 50% of the active roster were members. That takes us down to third place and the highest ranked “normal” stable; Degeneration-X. Quite a surprising result as most people would associate DX with success at the merchandise stand rather than winning championships. Down at the bottom of the table there are no surprises but I think The Cabinet are worth a mention for outranking Evolution, The Four Horsemen and The nWo.

 

Conclusion

So WWE’s efforts to re-launch a miserable version of WCW in 2001 may not have resulted in a second McMahon run wrestling promotion, but, technically speaking, it did yield the most successful stable in wrestling. However, this being wrestling I wouldn’t call this a clean win for The Alliance. In my opinion DX were robbed of a victory by two stables operating under favourable circumstances.

 

Please note that I’m not claiming this to be perfect, calculating this type of thing is an impossible task. This is just my attempt at ranking these stables using tangible data. Hopefully there are no errors, although finding an end date for many of these groups has been guess work due to them slowly disbanding rather than having a defined end. I do have to admit to not distinguishing between championships. Firstly I wanted to only use tangible data and not assign the various championships a fictitious score. Secondly, all bar the WWE Title have fluctuated in prestige making any fictitious score redundant. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this article and I encourage you to have a bash if you can think of another method.