‘WWE: Wrestling’s Greatest Factions’ DVD Review

The world of professional wrestling has, for many years, featured hundreds of various alliances, groups of men and women who, for countless reasons, teamed together in order to achieve something that they would be unable to achieve alone. Be it a group of good guys sticking together, as friends, to take down the heels, or the bad guys forming a gang as a way to intimidate, attack and overthrow the babyfaces. It has worked for decades and continues to this very day, with factions such as The Shield and The Wyatt Family (oh… and don’t forget 3MB) running rough-shot through WWE on their way to super-stardom. But, like I said, factions aren’t a new thing, they’ve been around for as long as steel folding chairs, brittle announce tables and sneaky managers, and this release is WWE’s look at some of the standout factions that have firmly planted their wresting boots into the history books over the years.

The layout of WWE: Wrestling’s Greatest Factions is nicely done. We get talking heads and clips of a particular faction followed by a chosen match that involves said group. This allows there to be a change in pace from documentary style information to in-ring footage. It works well and it was nice to see that many of the matches chosen were different from the usual picks and that made for a nice change.

The content of the set is listed below:

D-Generation X

Corporate Rumble for #30 Spot in Royal Rumble Match
D-Generation X vs. The Corporation
Raw – 11 January 1999

The Heenan Family

Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, King Kong Bundy, & Big John Studd vs. Big Machines, Super Machine, Captain Lou Albano
The Big Event – 28 August 1986

Right to Censor

Right to Censor vs. Too Cool & Rikishi
SummerSlam – 27 August 2000

The Fabulous Freebirds

8-man Tag Team Elimination Match
The Fabulous Freebirds vs. The Von Erichs & “Iceman“ King Parsons
WCCW – May 1983

The Nexus

5-on-5 Tag Team Elimination Match
The Nexus vs. John Cena, Randy Orton, Sheamus, Chris Jericho, & Edge
Raw – 30 August 2010

The Dangerous Alliance

‘Stunning’ Steve Austin & ‘Beautiful’ Bobby Eaton vs. Sting & Marcus Bagwell
WCW Championship Wrestling – 18 January 1992

The Hart Foundation

Flag Match
Bret Hart, Owen Hart, & The British Bulldog vs. ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, Dude Love, & Undertaker
Raw – 21 July 1997

n.W.o.

War Games Match
Team WCW vs. Team Hollywood vs. Team WolfPac
Fall Brawl – 13 September 1998

The Brood

The Brood vs. JOB Squad
Rock Bottom – 13 December 1998

Million Dollar Corporation

Million Dollar Team vs. Guts and Glory
Survivor Series – 23 November 1994

Nation of Domination

Owen Hart, Kama Mustafa & D-Lo Brown vs. Triple H & New Age Outlaws
Over the Edge – 2 May 1998

Blue World Order

Big Stevie Cool (w/ BWO) vs. Axl Rotten
Hardcore TV 194 – 7 January 1997

The Corporation

Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. The Corporation
Raw – 8 February 1999

Evolution

Evolution vs. The Dudley Boyz
Raw – 14 July 2003

Oddities

Kurrgan & Golga vs. Too Much
Shotgun – 17 October 1998

The Triple Threat

Shane Douglas & Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Rob Van Dam & Sabu
Cyberslam – 21 February 1998

Legacy

Legacy vs. Triple H, Batista &Shane McMahon
Backlash – 27 April 2009

Dungeon of Doom

War Games Match
Hulkamaniacs vs. Dungeon of Doom
Fall Brawl – 17 September 1995

Straight Edge Society

3-on-1 Handicap Match
CM Punk, Luke Gallows & Joey Mercury vs. Big Show
SummerSlam – 15 August 2010

The Four Horsemen

Ric Flair, Arn Anderson & Tully Blanchard vs. Barry Windham, Lex Luger & Sting
NWA Main Event – 3 April 1988

The set is a really well presented piece of work and is one of the better WWE compilation-style releases recently, but there is some glaring omissions from the DVD set which make it extremely strange. The Shield and The Wyatt Family, who are currently heavily featured on WWE programming and have been booked as main event players in the last few months are absent on the DVD set and feature as “extras” on the Blu-ray, and while I like additions for Blu-ray customers I feel that these two specific teams should have been included on the main content. I would have thought that a release about factions would have been thought-up because of how well received The Wyatt’s and The Shield have been, and the lack of them on the DVD set feels odd. I also feel like many newer fans of WWE’s product, who don’t own a Blu-ray player, will be put off buying this set due to these teams being left out. Still, they were included, but it seemed strange to me that they weren’t featured in a more obvious manner.

There were some factions included that I was surprised to see, which was nice. Lesser spoken of factions from the past, such as The Oddities, The Right to Censor and The Blue World Order are included on the set, and though the output of some of these teams was questionable, it is nice to take a walk down memory lane.

The major factions from history are on here, such as D-Generation X, The Four Horsemen, NWO and The Hart Foundation, and the footage of the groups is well edited and the featured talking heads, though not always terribly insightful, offer plenty of entertaining opinions on the various wrestlers.

Match-wise it is, as usual, a mixture of good and bad, but overall I enjoyed most of the matches on the set. There are matches from television that are usually not chosen for these sorts of releases, which makes for some interesting viewing. There are some duds, such as the bland Evolution vs. Dudley’s match from RAW in 2003 and an awful Oddities vs. Too Much encounter from an episode of Shotgun in 1998, but overall the content is enjoyable and re-watchable.

Blu-ray extras feature three extra factions, with matches to go along with them. The Shield, The Wyatt Family and The Spirit Squad are the groups included and my thoughts on this have already been mentioned in this review.

I have always been fond of groups and factions in pro-wrestling and this was a very entertaining look at some of the most memorable and dominant that the sport has seen. I would love to see more of these types of releases with WWE looking at a large number of talents, such as managers, women wrestlers and other less-talked about subjects.

A worthwhile purchase, especially for fans who enjoy revisiting gang warfare in wrestling rings of the past.
WWE: Wrestling’s Greatest Factions is released DVD and Blu-ray, through Freemantle Media, onMay 26th.