Retribution & 5 Other Failed Invasion Angles In Wrestling History
When invaders and usurpers come from a renegade wrestling promotion into a major territory, it can drive up business as well as the adrenaline from all parties involved, and gets the fans’ juices flowing as well. All sorts of dream matches and fantasy booking come into play and the fans start getting hopeful that said invasion will be the hottest thing in the business. An invasion angle is supposed to feel dangerous, like it’s not part of the scripted in-ring action. Something voyeuristic that fans are not supposed to be privy to.
Related: 10 Rivalries We Deserved During The Invasion But Never Got
But all (yes, all, including the New World Order) invasion angles eventually lose steam. They flop because eventually, the home base promotion has to “win the storyline,” since no promoter wants their product to seem inferior to the invaders, even if they happen to own the invaders, too. The nWo faltered for different reasons but still eventually petered out. They flopped after nearly two years under the weight of their own success but it still happened.
6 The NWA
For nearly fifty years. the National Wrestling Alliance wasn’t just the governing body of most professional wrestling territories, the NWA also helped several promotions like Crockett to be viable competition for Vince and the WWE. In the late '90s, Jim Cornette led a stable of men from the remnants of the NWA to feud with each other and the WWE roster. The NWA champion, Dan Severn and tag champs, The Rock N Roll Express invaded, and the new Midnight Express, Jeff Jarrett and Barry Windham, would join as well. The angle was in the parlance of Cornette, “deader than Kelsey’s nuts,” and McMahon simply declared the NWA was no longer allowed on Raw.
5 The Alliance
The dream of wrestling fans came true when WWE purchased WCW. All of the big dream matches that fans had been wanting for years were finally going to happen! Or perhaps not.
Related: 8 Things Most Fans Forget About The Invasion Storyline
Very quickly it was apparent that WWE wasn’t able to obtain the big time contracts of guys like Hulk Hogan and Goldberg and weren’t willing to make rookies like Chuck Palumbo look like formidable opponents. Even the ECW alumni joining the fray weren’t enough to save this angle. There was "No Chance In Hell" that WWE would ever book their greatest competitors to be booked to win the feud.
4 The Nexus
If one of the reasons invasion angles work is because they seem dangerous and violent, then The Nexus should have worked long past their memorable debut. The NXT rookies, including Daniel Bryan and Wade Barrett, stormed Monday Night Raw and obliterated everyone and everything in sight, including the ring itself! They took out Raw GM Bret Hart and instilled enough fear into everyone that an Anonymous Raw GM was needed. But after getting trounced by Super-Cena, there was little to no belief in the group being all that menacing anymore.
3 The nWo Invade WWE
One of the big reasons the nWo invading WCW initially worked like gangbusters was the fact that Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were believable invaders. In a world with no Internet, there was a lot more believability behind what they were doing.
Related: 5 Best & 5 Worst Moments Of Wrestlers Joining The nWo
But after years of watering the nWo down, WWE thought they could bring back the core trio and heat them back up again. Between the WWE fans demanding the return of Hulkamania and injuries and personal problems piling up, the nWo in WWE was done practically as soon as it started.
2 Retribution
As WWE was restricted to the Thunderdome due to the pandemic, more and more “technical difficulties” kept happening. Several superstars clad in black hooded sweatshirts assaulted any and all wrestlers. Ali joined them as their leader and Retribution was born.
Related: How WWE Turned Retribution Into A Huge Waste Of Potentional
If you listen to Ali on Corey Graves’ After The Bell podcast, he has a slew of grand ideas to explain the silly names of each member of the group. It was all actually a very well thought out plan. But Ali doesn’t do the booking, WWE does. Practically as fast as the group was revealed, they lost all the sense of danger that made them a threat in the first place. Combined with wins not happening at all meant a swift end to the group.
1 FreeAgentZ
How fast the mighty can fall. For a moment it seemed like Enzo and Cass were going to be a huge tag team in WWE. Thanks to Enzo’s rap and Cass’ size, it seemed like they were going to be a hybrid of The New Age Outlaws-meets-Two Dudes With Attitude. They quickly both become problems backstage and separated both personally and professionally before getting released. They were able to reconcile and on possibly their biggest stage, they reunited, now as nZo and CaZXL, the FreeAgentZ.
They came to the ROH/NJPW G1 show at MSG, and assaulted several superstars before being carted off. Ring Of Honor tried to sell it as an invasion until they fessed up that it was an angle. Unfortunately, it was the first and last time they appeared in ROH.
