Welcome to another eWrestlingNews Question of the Day!
Recently in Major League Wrestling, Brock Anderson, CW Anderson, Bobby Fish and Brett Ryan Gosselin have formed a new incarnation of The Four Horsemen, dubbing themselves The Rogue Horsemen. It’s not the first time we’ve seen an ersatz version of this concept, with things like Fortune (I always liked ‘Fourtune’ better), Evolution, and so on attempting to replicate the same idea, to varying degrees of success.
My question for you today is “If you could create a modern-day Four Horsemen with the current WWE and AEW rosters, who would you pick to be in those two groups?” By that, I mean one group using just WWE Superstars and one group using just AEW wrestlers, rather than combining the two rosters into one.
Remember to answer with your response in the comments below.
As far as my answer…
I’ll preface my answer by saying I’m not an NWA/WCW historian, so to me, The Four Horsemen isn’t something that I can speak to a full breakdown of. I could never justifiably give you a ranking of every member that has ever been in the group and all their feuds. Hell, when I was getting into wrestling as a kid, they were already ancient history and I was seeing people like Steve “Mongo” McMichael as a member, rather than the classic quartet plus J.J. Dillon. So take my considerations with that in mind, that while I’m feeling my 37 years more now than ever before, I’m not an old enough fogey to consider it heresy if you don’t list Danny Hodge in your all-time favorites and such.
With that out of the way, I’ll start with AEW.
Manager-wise, I think we’re limited to just picking either Don Callis or Stokely Hathaway. Since Stokely is the butt of too many jokes, I’ll go with Callis. However, that doesn’t mean I’ll just say The Don Callis Family’s already solved this problem with some of its previous members and pick Will Ospreay, Kyle Fletcher, Konosuke Takeshita and Powerhouse Hobbs. That’s too lazy and easy. Nor will I just pick Pinnacle and call it a day there.
Funny enough, if you look at The Bang Bang Gang, they have their main-eventer (Jay White), their singles midcarder (Juice Robinson) and their tag team (The Gunns). The Elite has the main-eventer of sorts in Kazuchika Okada, the midcarder in Jack Perry, and the tag team in The Young Bucks. Even The Undisputed Kingdom has Adam Cole at the top, Roderick Strong in the midcard, and Matt Taven & Mike Bennett in the tag team spot. If The Learning Tree had someone to team up with Bryan Keith, they’d fill up the quartet just the same, too! For all we know, that is going to happen with Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, Pac and Wheeler Yuta, also.
If the slate was wiped clean with some characters being rebooted in a sense, and there weren’t already enough attempts at this going on in AEW, I would probably make a team out of “Hangman” Adam Page at the top, FTR as the tag team, and maybe take a chance on a kid like Griff Garrison as the midcarder, with someone like Jeff Jarrett as the mentor role. Let’s go with a Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee kind of connection. I can see all these guys riding horses, can’t you? Yes, I’m being a bit literal and silly there, but I do think this faction could feasibly work.
When it comes to WWE, I’m actually quite at a loss for a different reason. It isn’t that there are too many factions playing on the same trope, but that I can’t see enough people lining up that would make sense to me.
My instinct would be to pick a leader in Cody Rhodes (after a heel turn), Seth Rollins, AJ Styles, or Randy Orton. However, the only people I can think of to put with Cody would be Carmelo Hayes and Trick Williams with Bron Breakker as the midcarder, but that degrades Trick/Melo. Rollins doesn’t have anyone that I think particularly works well with him, as he’s far more of a lone wolf at this point. Styles is in the same territory, and Orton already gave us Legacy, which was effectively his run at this.
Funny enough, the closest thing to a new Four Horsemen would have been if Imperium stayed together, with Ludwig Kaiser and Giovanni Vinci as the tag team, Gunther on top, and either Ilja Dragunov (ideally) or Pete Dunne joining the ranks as the midcarder. I don’t think that would happen now, though.
I thought about tossing around names like Josh Briggs, Austin Theory, #DIY, Lexis King, The Street Profits, but no puzzle pieces quite fit in a way that I’m even as happy with as the AEW group.
By default, I would have to just go back to my original thought process of Cody Rhodes leading the team, Bron Breakker as the midcarder, and the tag team of Trick Williams and Carmelo Hayes. As far as manager is concerned, I think this would be one of those times you’d have to ignore a J.J. Dillon, as they’d only get in the way, but it could be kind of funny to see Robert Stone in that role.
Needless to say, I do not think either of these companies need to try to take a crack at this Four Horsemen redo at this particular moment. We have The Bloodline, Blackpool Combat Club (or whatever they’re going to call themselves), The Elite, The Judgment Day, and plenty other groups that are doing just fine without rehashing this concept. But maybe in the future, it might be worth exploring again.
What do you think? Drop your thoughts below!
