Karl Anderson and Doc Gallows made their Raw debuts this week, attacking the Usos following their victory in the tag team contenders tournament and sparking rumors of the arrival of the popular Bullet Club faction in the WWE.
Their entry seemed similar to numerous invasion angles played out in the WWE over the years, ranging from the WCW-ECW led Alliance to the debut of the Shield. This list takes a look at the top 5 invasion angles in pro wrestling.
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5). The original ECW invasion of WWE
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Four years before the Alliance invaded WWE, ECW did a stand alone invasion of its own. The year was 1997 and the Philadelphia-based promotion was creating a buzz – a buzz so strong that Vince McMahon decided to strike an agreement with Paul Heyman allowing ECW talent to cross over to the WWE in a bid to arrest the momentum of rivals WCW.
The Sandman and Tommy Dreamer sat among the crowd during a match between Savio Vega and Bradshaw and the beer drinking ECW man proceeded to throw beer in Vega’s face. Tazz would invade Raw soon enough, plugging his ECW match with Sabu.
Colour commentator Jerry Lawler would take on the ECW wrestlers, coining the term Extremely Crappy Wrestling for ECW.
4). The Shield
The Shield is the most successful stable of the past decade in terms of producing future main eventers. When Roman Reigns, Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins interfered in the CM Punk – Ryback WWE Championship match, they were positioned as mercenaries invading the WWE.
Shield got over in an extremely short time and it took almost an year before the trio were beaten in a tag team match.
They even had feuds with the likes of John Cena and the brothers of destruction during that time.
3). The Nexus
The faction that started the invasion angle of the new decade, Nexus’ WWE debut has been copied by multiple tag teams, including the Shield. The Wade Barrett-led group of NXT graduates cost John Cena the WWE Championship and became prominent in a talented roster already featuring the likes of Cena, Randy Orton, Edge, Chris Jericho, Rey Mysterio and Bret Hart.
Nexus’ classic hyena attack where they would slowly surround the ring and pounce gave the feeling that their target would be a sitting duck when it was all said and done and it was the case most of the time.
2). The Alliance
The Invasion storyline of 2001 looked great on paper. WWE had just purchased WCW and the former WCW and ECW wrestlers would form an alliance and invade the WWE.
Just imagine the classic matches that could follow – DX vs NWO, Austin vs Goldberg, Sting vs The Undertaker and so on. However, most of the top WCW talent had contracts with WCW’s parent company Times Warner which meant that they could afford to sit at home for a year and still get paid rather than sign a new contract with the WWE. Hogan, Nash, Goldberg, Hall and Sting opted to do the same and the Invasion featured very few WCW wrestlers with true star power.
However, the storyline was too significant to be ignored and it dominated WWE programming for months. WCW wrestler Lance Storm would start the invasion, with a superkick to WWE wrestler Perry Saturn during a tag team match on Raw. Booker T and DDP would be the most well known WCW wrestlers to invade WWE and they would be joined by ECW stars including RVD and the Dudley Boyz.
The angle would involve multiple defections and would end at Survivor Series when team WWE defeated the Alliance in a 5 on 5 elimination tag team match.
1). NWO
The most successful of all invasion angles was what WCW pulled off in the mid nineties with the NWO. Scott Hall had come to the end of his WWE contract and the former Razor Ramon showed up at a WCW show unannounced and gave a promo.
Hall was positioned as some one coming over from the WWE to destroy WCW and Kevin Nash aka Diesel followed suit the next week. The two would later give an interview saying that they were not working for the WWE in order to prevent WWE from successfully suing WCW.
With the addition of Hulk Hogan, the NWO was formed and a multi year angle was devised where the three were positioned as outsiders looking to take over WCW programming. Multiple wrestlers joined the stable and the angle was responsible for the spike in WCW's ratings as it dominated the WWE.
