The Four Horsemen (professional wrestling)
Based on Wikipedia: The Four Horsemen (professional wrestling)
The Original Villains
In September 1985, something happened in professional wrestling that would echo through the decades. At a television taping in Atlanta's Omni arena, Ric Flair turned on his ally Dusty Rhodes in spectacular fashion. Rhodes had just saved Flair from a beating, and Flair repaid him by joining Ole and Arn Anderson in breaking Rhodes's ankle. It was a betrayal so complete, so vicious, that it needed a name to match.
That name came almost by accident.
According to most accounts, the production team threw together an impromptu interview with the conspirators—Flair, the two Andersons, and Tully Blanchard, along with Blanchard's manager J.J. Dillon. During this interview, Arn Anderson delivered a line that would become legendary: "The only time this much havoc had been wreaked by this few a number of people, you need to go all the way back to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."
The comparison stuck. These four wrestlers became the Four Horsemen, borrowing their name from the biblical figures who herald the end of the world. It was audacious, grandiose, and perfectly suited to professional wrestling's theatrical excess.
What Made Them Different
To understand why the Four Horsemen mattered, you need to understand what professional wrestling was like before them. Wrestling had always featured villains, of course. But these villains typically worked alone or in pairs. They were individuals, not institutions.
The Horsemen were something new: a stable. That's wrestling terminology for an alliance of wrestlers who work together over an extended period, sharing storylines, managers, and often a common philosophy. The Horsemen weren't just four wrestlers who happened to be friends. They were a brand, a lifestyle, a statement.
And what a statement it was. The Horsemen didn't just cheat to win matches. They lived extravagantly, bragging about limousines, private jets, expensive suits, and romantic conquests. They held most of the championships simultaneously. They were, in their own telling, simply better than everyone else—better wrestlers, better talkers, better at life itself.
This was the era of Reagan-era wealth worship, when excess wasn't shameful but aspirational. The Horsemen embodied that spirit perfectly. They were heels, meaning villains in wrestling parlance, but they were heels you might secretly want to be.
The Original Four
Ric Flair was the centerpiece, the "Nature Boy." Already the National Wrestling Alliance World Heavyweight Champion—the most prestigious title in wrestling at the time—Flair brought star power and legitimacy. His interview skills were legendary; he could talk for twenty minutes and leave audiences either hating him or mesmerized, often both.
Arn Anderson was the enforcer, a stocky, technically brilliant wrestler who looked like an accountant and fought like a cornered animal. His finishing move, the spinebuster, became iconic. Where Flair was flamboyant, Arn was workmanlike, dependable, the guy who'd break your arm without raising his voice.
Ole Anderson was the veteran, the connection to wrestling's past. He'd been teaming as one half of the Minnesota Wrecking Crew with his storyline brother Gene since the early 1970s. Ole brought credibility and a mean streak that even the other Horsemen seemed wary of.
Tully Blanchard was the pretty boy, a second-generation wrestler whose father had been a promoter in Texas. Blanchard was technically excellent in the ring and convincingly arrogant outside it. He brought his manager J.J. Dillon into the group, giving the Horsemen a fifth member who served as their mouthpiece, fixer, and occasional punching bag.
The Path of Destruction
The Horsemen didn't just beat opponents. They destroyed them.
Their feud with Dusty Rhodes set the template. After breaking his ankle in that initial attack, they later broke his hand. Rhodes was wrestling's most popular babyface—the term for a hero—and the Horsemen took apparent joy in targeting him. This wasn't competition. It was persecution.
They broke Ricky Morton's nose. They injured Nikita Koloff's neck. They went to war with the Road Warriors, a face-painted duo so intimidating they seemed barely human, in a series of WarGames matches.
WarGames deserves explanation. It was a match type created specifically for these feuds, featuring two rings side by side enclosed in a single massive cage. Teams entered one at a time until all ten wrestlers were inside, at which point the only way to win was to make someone from the opposing team surrender. These matches were brutal, bloody, and exactly as chaotic as they sound.
During the first WarGames match, J.J. Dillon suffered a legitimately separated shoulder when a move went wrong. He landed directly on his right arm attempting to help execute the Road Warriors' finishing maneuver, the Doomsday Device. Dillon was replaced for subsequent matches by a masked wrestler called War Machine, who would later become famous under a different name: the Big Boss Man.
Evolution and Fracture
Groups like this never stay static. By early 1987, cracks were appearing.
Ole Anderson was the first to go. The storyline excuse involved him missing a show to watch his son Bryant wrestle in a high school match. Tully Blanchard questioned Ole's commitment, calling Bryant a "snot-nosed kid." But the real issue was Ole's age and declining role; the group needed fresh blood.
That fresh blood was Lex Luger, a young powerhouse with a bodybuilder's physique who'd arrived from Florida Championship Wrestling. Luger became an "associate member" at first, then replaced Ole entirely. The Horsemen had evolved.
But Luger's tenure was troubled. He blamed Dillon for costing him a championship when one of Dillon's cheating schemes backfired. He refused to participate in an internal agreement about a battle royal. By January 1988, Luger had turned on the group entirely, teaming with Barry Windham to oppose them.
Then came one of wrestling's great heel turns. In April 1988, during a tag team championship defense, Windham suddenly attacked his own partner Luger. He'd been a Horseman all along, or at least had decided to become one. Windham took Luger's spot in the group.
Peak and Collapse
This new configuration—Flair, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, and Barry Windham—is often considered the greatest faction in wrestling history, at least in terms of pure wrestling ability. All four could work long, technically complex matches. All four could talk. And crucially, they held every major championship simultaneously: Flair had the World title, Windham the United States title, and Arn and Tully the Tag Team titles.
It lasted six months.
In September 1988, Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard left Jim Crockett Promotions to join the World Wrestling Federation, the rival company run by Vince McMahon. They left so abruptly that they had to drop the tag team titles to the Midnight Express at the last minute. In the WWF, they became the Brain Busters, managed by Bobby "The Brain" Heenan.
Their departure gutted the Horsemen. Flair and Windham continued using the name, and the company tried adding new members. Butch Reed joined briefly. Barry's brother Kendall appeared to be joining after betraying his tag partner in a match. None of it worked.
The killing blow came in early 1989. Flair and Windham lost a tag match to Eddie Gilbert and a surprise partner: Ricky Steamboat, one of Flair's most famous rivals. Humiliated, Flair fired Dillon on the spot. Dillon left to take a front office job with the WWF. Flair and Windham dropped the Horsemen name entirely, briefly rebranding as the Yamazaki Corporation under a Japanese manager.
The original era was over.
The Meaning of the Name
Why did the Four Horsemen name resonate so deeply? The biblical reference was part of it—the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, from the Book of Revelation, are Conquest, War, Famine, and Death, supernatural figures who herald the end of the world. Arn Anderson was comparing himself and his colleagues to harbingers of destruction, which is exactly the kind of grandiosity professional wrestling rewards.
But there was something else. The number four has a pleasing completeness to it. Four corners of the ring. Four directions. Four original members, each with a distinct role: the star, the enforcer, the veteran, the pretty boy. Adding a fifth member like Dillon as a non-wrestling manager preserved the number while expanding the group's capabilities.
The four-finger hand gesture became iconic—Horsemen raising four fingers to the camera, to their opponents, to the crowd. It was simple enough for anyone to imitate, specific enough to be instantly recognizable. It was a gang sign for wrestling fans.
Why It Mattered
The Four Horsemen weren't the first wrestling stable, but they perfected the concept. They demonstrated that a group of wrestlers working together could be more compelling than individuals working alone. They proved that villains could be aspirational, that audiences would boo them while secretly admiring them.
Their influence extends far beyond wrestling. When the tech analysis site Stratechery refers to Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta as "the Four Horsemen," it's invoking that same sense of overwhelming, coordinated power. The phrase has become shorthand for any dominant quartet whose combined force seems unstoppable.
Within wrestling, the Horsemen template has been copied endlessly. The New World Order, D-Generation X, Evolution, The Shield—all descended from what Flair, the Andersons, and Blanchard created in that Atlanta arena in 1985. Every modern wrestling faction owes something to the four men who decided they'd rather be feared than loved, rich than righteous, and villainous than forgettable.
Revivals and Legacy
The Horsemen reformed in December 1989 with a twist that shocked audiences. The new lineup included Flair, Arn Anderson, Ole Anderson—and Sting, who had been one of their greatest opponents. Tully Blanchard was supposed to return as well, but he'd failed a drug test while still with the WWF, and World Championship Wrestling decided not to rehire him.
This version was different. They were faces now, heroes, feuding against Gary Hart's J-Tex Corporation. It was strange to see the Horsemen as good guys, like watching a documentary where the villains suddenly help the townspeople. But wrestling is always reinventing itself.
There would be many more revivals over the following decade. Different members cycled through—Brian Pillman, Chris Benoit, Steve McMichael, Curt Hennig, Dean Malenko. Some versions worked better than others. None quite recaptured the original magic.
What remained constant was Ric Flair and Arn Anderson. They were members of every incarnation until Anderson's retirement after a neck injury. As of 2022, Arn Anderson owns the trademark to the Four Horsemen name and all associated intellectual property. The enforcer, it turns out, was also the businessman.
The Theatrical Truth
Professional wrestling occupies a strange space between sport and fiction. Everyone knows the outcomes are predetermined, the feuds scripted, the injuries often faked. And yet.
And yet Arn Anderson really did separate J.J. Dillon's shoulder during that WarGames match. Barry Windham really did break his hand fighting Lex Luger. The wrestlers really did fly in private jets and wear custom suits and live the gimmick outside the arena, as Arn Anderson put it. The lines between performance and reality blurred constantly.
Arn Anderson has said that he, Flair, and Blanchard were as close as anyone could be away from the ring while they were together. This wasn't entirely an act. These were men who spent years traveling together, performing together, building something together. The Horsemen were fictional, but the bonds weren't entirely.
Perhaps that's why the name has endured. When we call any dominant quartet "the Four Horsemen," we're not just invoking biblical apocalypse. We're invoking the memory of four men in sequined robes, holding up four fingers, declaring themselves the best at everything. We're invoking the theatrical truth that sometimes villains are more interesting than heroes, that arrogance is more entertaining than humility, and that the end of the world makes for excellent television.