Back in the day, Survivor Series used to actually consist of elimination matches made up of four superstars, not five. These four-man teams would typically revolve around some kind of theme, too. If they didn’t, WWE slapped a gimmicky name on them anyway and it was both awful and amazing at the same time.
In the spirit of that, and the fact that we have three groups of four superstars currently on the roster at the moment, I got to thinking. What if WWE decided to ditch the brand supremacy gimmick, abandon the Raw/SmackDown split (or at least suspend it for this event) and go ahead with the same concept? What kind of teams could we make that would mesh well together and what would their themes be?
Thus, let’s get into another fantasy booking scenario I’m dubbing MAKE THE TEAM. Let’s get started!
Warning: Since these are cheesy names to begin with, I’m going full-blown cheesy with some of these. By no means do I think most, if not all of these team names wouldn’t be laughed at these days. Of course they would be. They’re awful. But I’m writing it as if we were still stuck in 1990 when these things were how WWE used to do it.
Teams on the Roster Right Now
We actually already have three of these teams in a legitimate fashion at the moment, as well as one team that’s up for debate.
The Hurt Business consists of MVP, Bobby Lashley, Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin.
RETRIBUTION has Mia Yim (Reckoning) but four male superstars in Mustafa Ali, Mace, Slapjack and T-Bar.
You can’t forget about The Undisputed ERA’s Adam Cole, Bobby Fish, Kyle O’Reilly and Roderick Strong.
Then, technically, you have Akira Tozawa and his army of ninjas. Any three other masked members of that clan could fill in beside him and get their asses handed to them, and they’re certainly themed as a unit.
But let’s get creative (for better or worse) and make some new ones.
The BARtist Collective = Sheamus, Cesaro, Shinsuke Nakamura and Sami Zayn
Good lord that’s an awful name, isn’t it? But people love mixing two words together if there is a conjoined couple of letters. That’s why we got RybAxel.
This is a mashup of The Bar and The Artist Collective. Outside of the terrible name (again, I’m trying to be cheesy with the names), this is actually a rock solid group.
Sheamus and Cesaro bring the power. Nakamura brings the finesse. Zayn brings the intelligence. There’s not a bad performer of the bunch. One is a former world champion, the others have won midcard titles and all of them have experience working together, minus Sheamus/Nakamura and Sheamus/Zayn, but Cesaro is the glue holding them all together.
The King’s Court = King Corbin, ???, Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode
This is an old team name, but it’s one of the best. It always made sense so long as there was at least one person who went by a king name.
King Corbin has already worked alongside Ziggler and Roode for many months. There’s a camaraderie there that can be built upon. The trick is finding the fourth member of their squad.
Chad Gable sprung to mind, as he was working under Corbin while he was still Shorty G. If we’re limited to SmackDown, he’s pretty much the only option for it. No one else would fit, unless Kalisto is a heel and they go with him as the Greatest Luchador of All Time (GLOAT) being royal in some fashion. Maybe he could even wear a king-like mask of some sort.
Prince Mysterio was a rumored name for Dominik. Maybe if he turned heel, that could work, instead. However, that’s too difficult to pull off in this time frame, so I’d probably just go with Gable.
Raw Underground = Arturo Ruas, Dabba-Kato, Riddick Moss and Erik or Braun Strowman
Raw Underground is currently at least suspended, if not entirely done, due to COVID outbreaks. However, if we work under the assumption that it would come back or that people would keep the gimmick alive in some fashion, this can be a common ground for some people.
We’ve seen plenty of superstars associated with Raw Underground that couldn’t be picked for this role. Some are now on SmackDown, while others just fit other types of teams better, like Dolph Ziggler.
These five work, in my mind. It would just be a matter of narrowing down which one doesn’t make the team. I’d likely boot Strowman out of the bunch and put him elsewhere, unless the goal was to have both he and Dabba-Kato on the crew to make it a super tough team to overcome.
Team 2476 = Dominik Mysterio, Rey Mysterio, Buddy Murphy and Humberto Carrillo
You want a really terrible team name for them? Take 619 and multiply it by 4. Team 2476. Pretty awful, right?
Dominik and Rey is a given. Humberto Carrillo has teamed with them on multiple occasions, so he seems like a solid pick to fight alongside them, particularly as WWE’s never bothered to turn him heel and put him with Andrade and Angel Garza like I was hoping would happen.
The fourth member of the team would pretty much have to be Murphy. Not only is he trying to bury the hatchet with them, he’s also kind of dating Aalyah. They may not like it, but he’s got a seat at the table for holidays if that’s the case (kayfabe, naturally).
The New Harday = Big E, Kofi Kingston, Xavier Woods and Jeff Hardy
The New Day as a unit is a given. They just need a fourth member to their squad.
Since no one else has been properly associated with them at this point, there’s no go-to answers. I had considered R-Truth, Otis, Daniel Bryan and some others before I realized Jeff Hardy might be the best fit.
The New Day were the ones to introduce The Hardy Boyz back into WWE for their return, it gives me the chance to give them the awful team name of The New Harday, and they can play off how they’re colorful characters. Jeff can paint his face the same as New Day has their gear.
Remember, these teams aren’t supposed to be actual teams. They’re just temporary alliances for a one-shot pay-per-view. I would never want Hardy to be a member of The New Day. No one should join that group as it would ruin the dynamic those three have.
Team 24/7 = R-Truth, Akira Tozawa, Drew Gulak and Titus O’Neil
R-Truth, Akira Tozawa and Drew Gulak have been chasing each other for weeks upon weeks as the focal points of the 24/7 Championship. It makes sense to team them up, only for them to have issues resisting turning on each other.
We do need a fourth, though. If I could draft anyone to the role, it would be Drake Maverick. However, he’s in NXT, so I’m keeping that off the table for now.
Titus O’Neil is the next best fit. He was the first to hold the title, is equally a comedic character and has no other teams I can think of where he could fit.
Team EVOLVE = Daniel Bryan, Drew Gulak, Matt Riddle and Keith Lee
All four of these guys have a history in EVOLVE and are connected to one another through another person.
Bryan and Gulak were teaming earlier this year. Gulak’s been associated with Riddle with the Catch Point stable. Riddle and Lee were bros in NXT and before that. There you go.
Outside of Gulak being booked as a joke more often than not, this is one hell of a team. There is a ton of in-ring talent to go around. Bryan’s got the most experience, Lee’s got the power, Riddle’s got tenacity and Gulak’s got the coaching. This would actually be quite the awesome team.
The A-Listers = The Miz, John Morrison, Elias and ???
The Miz and John Morrison are a duo, so they’re easy to pair. My justification for Elias being on this team is that Miz and Morrison did two music videos and could see eye to eye with Elias based on a musical appreciation.
It’s a bit of a stretch to include anyone else, but the closest person I could think of to fit that extra slot was Angel Garza. There’s not much of a rationalization, to be honest. Then again, not everyone on these former Survivor Series teams fully 100% fit their theme.
Maybe Garza sings a love ballad to someone on the roster and they recruit him based on that? Perhaps it’s just a fact that he’s full of himself like everyone else and they can more easily see eye-to-eye with him than someone like Ricochet. I think it could work.
Style in Fashion = Ashante “Thee” Adonis, Isaiah “Swerve” Scott, Fandango and Tyler Breeze
Adonis and Scott have been working alongside each other recently. Both have a certain swag about themselves (even going so far as to give themselves those nicknames) and they could make for a great tag team.
Breezango already is a great tag team. As The Fashion Police, they’ve even worked alongside Scott against Legado del Fantasma.
Pair them all up and you’ve got a group of four guys who strut to the ring, make a presentation out of their style and can fly around between the ropes.
Team Rising to the Moon = Austin Theory, Chase Parker, Matt Martel and Cameron Grimes
Austin Theory’s whole gimmick these days is talking about how he’s the future of WWE, even if he loses more matches than he wins. This is going to be the theme of this group (despite how, if I had it my way, Theory would actually be more legit.)
Ever-Rise (Parker and Martel) fit that bill. They call themselves Ever-Rise, after all, yet are more often the ones looking up at the lights at the end of a match. They’re the resident jobber team of NXT even more so than Drake Maverick and Killian Dain.
I had thought about putting Kona Reeves onto this, as he’d be the best fit. However, he’s been injured long enough that I don’t know if/when he’ll be back and if he’ll continue doing the whole “The Finest” gimmick.
Instead, there’s Cameron Grimes. Lately, Grimes has been saying that he’s going “straight to the moon” and is so obnoxious that he would fit in here. That guy’s gone from someone I can’t stand to someone I’m enjoying quite a bit.
The Freak Show = Lars Sullivan, Aleister Black, Bray Wyatt and Braun Strowman or maybe Otis
Definitely, Lars Sullivan and Aleister Black would be on the team. Sullivan’s The Freak, after all, and Black very much wants to be an odd man out in seemingly every environment.
The other three could all fit for different reasons, but only two would be able to get on the crew.
If you imagined this as a team that actually can work alongside each other, then the other two would have to be Bray Wyatt and Braun Strowman. Despite how those two have had their differences, WWE’s ignored that in the past come Survivor Series. They used to be a team, too.
The Freak, The Harbinger of Fury, The Fiend and The Monster Among Men. That’s an intimidating group.
But what if you envision this as a wildcard team that doesn’t get along but were grouped together anyway? If that’s the case, tossing Otis onto this would throw the whole thing into chaos.
He’s not a freak in the same way, but he’s definitely got his freaky tendencies, that’s for sure.
The Odd Squad = Bronson Reed, Damian Priest, Dexter Lumis, Kushida
This is basically The Freak Show, but with more of an oddball twist to it, rather than necessarily pure monstrous freaks.
Bronson Reed is dubbed colossal. Damian Priest is this weird gothic type guy, in a sense. Dexter Lumis is all sorts of creepy and weird more than anyone else on this team. And then you’ve got Kushida, who would entirely just be taken seriously, but acts like he thinks he’s Marty McFly.
The Bob Squad = Bobby Fish, Bobby Lashley, Robert Roode and Robert Stone
Come on! That’s so awful I couldn’t possibly not put it down here!
Incomplete Ideas
Lucha House Party plus Rey Mysterio felt like so much of a cop-out to me that I didn’t want to elaborate on it, but that’s an option.
Legado del Fantasma already has three members. However, I couldn’t think of a fourth that I could imagine fitting in with that group.
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out who The Street Profits could team with. You’d think that would be an easy call, but nothing seemed right.
I wanted to make a team out of collegiate/amateur wrestlers. Chad Gable, Desmond Troy, etc. However, that didn’t manifest in a way I liked enough.
The Bollywood Boyz, Ariya Daivari and Jinder Mahal? The Brian Kendrick, Ashante “Thee” Adonis and two other “the/thee” people?
I want to know what you can think of. If you’ve got some suggestions of corny teams, drop them in the comments below!
