Nightmare Collective

[0.0] "Seeing this for a second time during a re-watch, I still don't know what the hell they were going for. Brandi was the leader and she couldn't wrestle. Kong was the big threat but she was in her mid-40's and seemed incredibly limited physically. Luther was in his 50's when he was brought in to do...whatever. No one knew who Mel was and no one was told why they should care. When you look at how they started, what they added, how they built it, and how it ended not one damned bit of it makes sense."

[0.0] "An excuse for Brandi to get herself on the show. In the early days of AEW, Brandi running wild might be the single thing that I hated the most. Their segments were terrible."

[0.0] "This group is so bad that I am almost certain that this was the starting point of fans not liking Brandi. Not a single thing any of them did was memorable, and it is SHOCKING to me that Luther is the one who is still in the company and has a major role. Well, he did until Toni Storm left for a while but still!"

[0.0] "This is AEW worst ever group, faction, storyline and angle. Brandi wasn't ready to lead anything and everything about this was 100% trash, the matches, the promos. I'm glad it didn't lasted long and feel sorry for Amazing Kong, I like her and she didn't deserved to be included in this."

[0.0] "This was an absolute train wreck, from beginning to end. Brandi Rhodes is most definitely not good enough to be the leader of a stable, as she fails at almost any wrestling endeavor she tries. Awesome Kong needed to be given a new manager, or at least used better, as she kinda sucked in this period. Mel has no talent whatsoever, so she only made the group worse. And if AEW wanted to bring in Luther, why in this? It did not help a single person in its entire existence, and was a failure through and through."

[0.0] "As others reviewers have said (and more eloquantly than I will manage to) this stable thoroughly deserves it's low rating, because it was a complete failure. So much so, that they literally had to acknowledge it on TV. If I remember correctly (and it's been a few years), it began with Brandi begining to act "spooky" (there were vignettes and segments where she spoke in a kind of slow/sinister voice) and accompanying Awesome Kong for her matches. When Kong won, Brandi would cut a piece of her fallen opponents hair off. One week Kong and Rhodes were in the ring and Rhodes asked for volunteers to join the faction and a "fan" (Mel) put her hand up, and acted euphoric as they shaved her head. I guess this meant she was in the group as she started to accompany them too. I'm pretty sure their final appearance was when Luther debuted to join them, interferring at the end of a match or something... Anyway, the whole thing just didn't work. It felt like some kind of cringe-y throwback, and the presentation didn't really fit the broader vibe of AEW. They aborted the angle by having Brandi "go to therapy" in some vignettes that were only shown on YouTube, but were acknowledged on TV. A bad angle is one where no one comes out of it looking good, but The Nightmare Collective literally made everyone involved look worse, so it has to go down as a complete failure. I can't think of any redeeming factors to bump the score up... There weren't any good segments or anything like that... That means it kinda has to be a 0."

[3.0] "This was a weird, unnecessary faction that no one understood, I feel like Awesome Kong, in the last stage of her career, should have been used better."

[0.0] "Out of the nearly 3000 ratings I've given for various wrestlers, matches, events, tag teams, stables, and so on, this is the first time I feel that giving a '0' rating is deserved. This was a beyond awful and beyond laughable idea for a group. Brandi, ever desperate to use her genuinely popular husband's influence to increase her own status and attempt to make her the TV star she always wanted to be, somehow actually convinced Cody and AEW that it would be a good idea to provide her with her own stable, of which she would of course be the leader. Why, in God's name why, would someone who wrestles as rarely and as awfully as Brandi deserve to get her own stable? There was no reason for it other than literally just for Brandi to stroke her ego. Now let's look at the laughable list of members. Kong could have been a fine monster but she was broken down and showed minimal care for her in-ring work, and she basically retired right after the Nightmare Collective came together, which was obviously for the best. Luther was brought into the company as a supposed death-match legend famous in Japan, yet no-one had actually heard of him. He worked an incredibly boring and low-effort style, and his goofy look further made him a massive joke. The woman known comedically as just "Mel" looked to have very minimal in-ring skills and zero personality, only being memorable for the hilariously stupid head-shaving angle. So, on their own these 4 wrestlers all sucked to differing degrees, but more than that, there was literally nothing tying them together. Why the hell would Kong, this famous and accomplished US women's wrestler, choose Brandi as her manager/tag partner when Brandi has never, ever succeeded in either arena? And then why would Brandi and Kong choose Luther, who had accomplished absolutely nothing and had zero potential to be anything worthwhile, as the sole men's representative for their team? Were they purposefully trying to be treated like a joke? And then they topped it off with the completely uncalled for "Mel", who emerged from the crowd and happily offered for her head to be shaved as some sort of phoney "dark" ritual to show her commitment to the group (the same group she apparently literally only *just* met). Everything about this group was absolutely, 100% awful. What solidified them as a full '0' is that even AEW admitted the group was a total failure, seen by them quickly and quietly breaking the group up almost as soon as they formed. That cemented them as one of the worst groups ever, since they then never got more time to try save themselves and course-correct. Breaking them up so quickly was obviously for the best, though, since with the lineup they had there was no way they were ever going to do anything remotely good. Shame on AEW for ever green-lighting this abomination of a group, but at the same time props to AEW for not making us wait very long before pulling the plug."

[0.0] "One of AEW's first attempts to create a stable and it turned out to be a total fail. Their gimmick, their promos, their matches and pretty much everything about it was a low quality material, that didn't fit the TV wrestling show. Big Kong was my favourite and I respect her. She has some knowledge about this business and can work well. Too bad her character was completely wasted by appearing on TV in company of these three guys."

[0.0] "What the hell was this supposed to be? Certainly a low point in the short history of AEW. It damaged the already weak women's division to the point where they're still recovering today."

[0.0] "I have no clue what the point of this stable was, and absolutely is the worst thing AEW has done. The debut of Luther was just so bad and I'm glad they got rid of this group because I couldn't stand it."

[0.0] "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Terrible terrible stable and I'm glad that this thing is done because it was awful."

[2.0] "Very bad idea. Terribly booked and almost ruined the womens division. At least they had some decent moments. So a 2 is fine."

[1.0] "A pretty huge miss that could've buried the women's division had it not been ended when it did. This gimmick seemed like it had legs at the beginning but pretty quickly went off the rails and never recovered. A miscalculation of what people, women in particular, wanted from the product. All four performers are better off doing other things in AEW and hopefully we get to see Awesome Kong and Mel work in the women's division again sometime."