There’s very little question that The Four Horsemen are one of the greatest and most influential stables in professional wrestling. The group was built around Ric Flair, who appeared in its every incarnation as its top dog and often as not champion, and featured a rotating cast of supporting players, some who took multiple rides alongside The Nature Boy, and some who were there and gone within a few months’ time.

Given Flair’s retirement, not to mention his health scares from last year, I think it’s safe to say we’ll never see the Horsemen again, at least as we knew them. While factions like Evolution and Fortune tapped into the Horsemen ethos, and no less than two separate clusters of female performers (one in NXT, the other in mixed martial arts) called themselves the Four Horsewomen, it doesn’t look like we’ll ever see another true Horsemen stable. So, this week’s column takes a look back through Horsemen history ranking the members of the group.

The focus of this countdown is on degree of fit with the Horsemen culture, and accomplishments under the Horsemen banner. Accomplishments that were completely separate from their time as Horsemen were not a major consideration (so, for example, Chris Benoit doesn’t get credit for having been a world champion). As always, my personal opinion weighs heavily, and as a clarifying note, I opted not to include JJ Dillion in this countdown because he spent the overwhelming majority of his time with the group as a manager rather than a wrestler, and was typically not counted among the Four Horsemen proper.

#7. Dean Malenko

By the mid-to-late 1990s, the Horsemen were a shell of the institution they’d once been. Just the same, they did get trotted out a few more times to varying degrees of success. 1998 saw the final true iteration of the group and featured a mix of old allies and young talents with the in-ring credibility to justify induction into the wrestling world’s most storied stable. This group of Horsemen’s primary function was to stand up to the New World Order, which they did successfully for a brief period, before ultimately failing like most any other WCW talents at the hands of the almighty super group.

Malenko gets the nod here for representing what a new generation of Horsemen might have been, every bit the technician that greats like Ric Flair and Tully Blanchard had been in their heyday, if not quite the showman. Malenko gets the nod here for bringing the credibility of real skill, plus past runs as a US and Cruiserweight Champion to the proceedings.

To be fair, Malenko’s frequent tag partner Chris Benoit probably has equal if not greater claim to this number seven spot but, well, when I can justifiably omit Benoit from a countdown for someone on equal footing, I am inclined to do so.

#6. Brian Pillman

1995 saw a heated feud with excellent ring work that no one really wanted to see—Ric Flair vs. Arn Anderson. The two had developed a cult of fanship around their devilishly good heel collaboration. Moreover, Flair was over as a main event star, while Anderson was well-respected but, at least in kayfabe, always a mid-card or tag team talent. That the two would have tensions after years of Anderson watching Flair’s back made sense, but it wasn’t a rivalry fans were exactly clamoring for as it was more fun to see them work together.

They squared off at Fall Brawl and Brian Pillman proved the X-factor, ultimately gifting Anderson the win. This set up Flair to seek out a partner to help him take on the heel duo that had dared cross him. He turned to Sting.

While Flair turning on Sting wasn’t exactly a new concept, the ends justified the means in this case as Flair, Anderson, and Pillman wound up ganging up on the Stinger to bring back the Horsemen and threaten to restore the group to old glory after a fumbled version from 1993 (including Paul Roma) threatened to tank their legacy. No, this new incarnation of the Horsemen didn’t exactly light the world on fire, but Pillman offered an exciting mix of the group’s trademark in-ring talent with the addition of his loose cannon character just starting to take shape to add the extra appeal of a little insanity to the proceedings. The Pillman and Anderson was underappreciated and underutilized pair for the different skillsets they brought to the table and chaos they may well have wrought over WCW in that time. Just the same, for potential, and particularly for his early work in getting over the new version of the faction as a legitimate threat, Pillman gets the number six spot in the countdown.

#5. Ole Anderson

Ole Anderson was never the flashiest member of the Four Horsemen, but he was a charter member of the group, and a damn solid contributor. The Horsemen always walked the line between rugged tough guys and playboys who lived a high lifestyle, and Ole was among those Horsemen with a foot firmly planted in the former group as a no-nonsense ruffian who worked snug, looked like an everyman, and was devoted to the kayfabe cause of backing Ric Flair.

Looking back, folks have their reservations about Ole as a booker and as a worker who didn’t sell as much as he should have. Moreover, he tends to get overlooked in Horsemen lore for only being a part of a couple iterations of the group, and for being the first man ever kayfabe cut from the faction. Nonetheless, Ole was key to founding the group in the first place, in selling the partnership between the kayfabe Anderson brothers and their kayfabe cousin Ric to get wrestling’s most successful stable to that date off the ground.

#4. Barry Windham

While Ole Anderson was an original Horsemen, In reflecting on the stable, Barry Windham tends to be the default fourth man plugged in alongside the core three men who (spoiler alert) occupy the top of this countdown. Some of that is a result of Windham being part of the faction in its truest heyday, and some of that’s a testament to the quality of his work as a wrestler. Moreover, if you read between the lines, it’s not so hard to deduce that Ric Flair himself saw Windham as the truest fourth Horseman, and the man he intended to eventually pass the torch of the NWA or WCW Championship to (though the powers that be wanted Lex Luger).

Windham combined the rough and tumble big man style of the Andersons, with Tully Blanchard’s smooth delivery, with the blue-chip potential to legitimately become the next main event star. Windham never fully realized that potential, and thus tends to be best remembered as a star on the rise, as he was portrayed with this faction.

#3. Tully Blanchard

While Tully Blanchard’s Horsemen legacy was arguably muddled by being absent from the group from its 1993 version onward, he was nonetheless a part of any incarnation of the Horsemen in serious consideration for the group’s best unit. That’s not a coincidence, because Blanchard’s contributions to the group were key to its success. Second to Ric Flair (and maybe Barry Windham) Blanchard had the most main event potential of any long time Horsemen and his combination of skill and cocky heel attitude made him quite analogous to Flair in a lot of ways.

As it stood, Blanchard started out as the faction’s secondary singles star, largely locked into the US title scene where he waged war with Magnum TA among others. When Ole Anderson left the group, Blanchard, in a sense, moved into his spot as a tag team partner to Arn Anderson, but put a different spin on the role as far less of a brute and more of a technically proficient complement to Anderson the roughneck. The pair was even better than the Andersons and added to the Horsemen’s list of credentials one of the legit greatest tag teams of their generation.

The main factor that keeps Blanchard firmly planted in the number three spot was that he didn’t carry on with the faction long enough. Drug testing cost him his spot with WCW in 1993, and when the company opted to essentially substitute Paul Roma in his place, it marked that version of the stable as dead on arrival.

#2. Arn Anderson

While there’s an argument to be made that his in-ring talent, promo skills, and size could have made Arn Anderson a deserving main eventer in his own right, he instead goes down in wrestling history as arguably the greatest second-in-command heel of all time. Through thick and thin, working as half of a tag team, or as a mid-card foundation for the faction, Anderson was a core piece for almost every incarnation of the Horsemen, right up to the end of his in-ring career.

Anderson was a great utility player who brought out the best in opponents as well as tag team partners ranging from Ole Anderson to Tully Blanchard to even Paul Roma. He was great, too, in seconding Flair, a key figure in adding realism and brutality to Horsemen ambush beatdowns. On top of all of that, it was his off-the-cuff remark in a promo—comparing himself, Flair, Blanchard and Ole to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that lent the group its name. That’s more than good enough to shore up the number two spot on this list.

#1. Ric Flair

There is, of course, only one way this countdown could really end. Ric Flair was the man in every version of the Horsemen, usually in the thick of the world title picture as either champ or top contender, until those last, ineffectual iterations of the group for which the Horsemen were largely cannon fodder for the New World Order.

Still, its Flair’s style and glamour that made the Horsemen special—not just a gang, but a collection of world-clas talent that lived the high life. While kayfabe will suggest that the Horsemen made Flair, so often coming to his aid and protecting his title, the inverse is at least equally true—that Flair’s greatness as an in-ring talent and talker escalated the faction to the very, very short list of greatest stables in wrestling history.

Who would you add to the list? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.