WWE: 10 Iconic Alliances That Should Be Reinvented For 2014

3. The New World Order (1996-2002)

There really isn't a whole lot to say about the nWo that hasn't already been said. The simple fact is that despite their advanced ages and diminished wrestling skill sets, the New World Order was undeniably cool. Achieving this "cool again" status came unusually easy for original nWo members Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall, and Kevin Nash at ages 43, 38, and 37 respectively. Their mere formation at WCW's 1997 Bash at the Beach ushered in a new Golden Age of Professional Wrestling, and fired the first shots in what would later be coined the Monday Night Wars between WCW and WWE. With the nWo invading and successfully conquering WCW, the promotion itself was catapulted seemingly overnight into a legitimate threat to Vince McMahon's decade-long domination over the wrestling industry. The nWo, whose matches were not always pretty to watch, was the first faction to break professional wrestling's proverbial fourth wall mixing together a compelling combination of anti-authoritarianism and realism never before seen. Kayfabe was broken both intentionally and relentlessly, and many wrestling fans soon switched from McMahon's comparatively boring product at the time in favor of the new cutting edge feel of Monday Nitro. Overcrowding egos and an overly inflated membership eventually doomed the nWo in the late 1990s (seriously, who cared when Scott Norton joined?), but this faction almost single-handedly sacked the city of Stamford, Connecticut and crumbled WWE's Ivory Titan Towers. Vince McMahon was forced to transform his product from the predictable gimmicky format he seemed content with continuing in favor of edgier characters like "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Mankind, The Rock, and Degeneration X. This era of promotional competition and one-upmanship is something many longtime wrestling fans (myself included) long for when we sense even the slightest hint of creative laziness in WWE storylines. 2014 Proposed Update - NXT Takeover Who would have thought NXT would be still be relevant today after falling into near obscurity after their first much criticized season in 2010? Several main-event performers came out of that first season of NXT, but it wasn't until the brand was reformatted in 2012 that NXT proved itself to watchable. A few well-placed NXT interlopers wreaking havoc on Monday Night RAW could prove just as compelling as the original nWo invasion in 1996.