The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 TNA Main Event Heel Stables

The heel stable is a major trope in professional wrestling. Just about every major promotion has had them, and quite a few have pushed such stables all the way to the top of the card. And that makes sense. The Four Horsemen may not have been the first group to establish this model, but are nonetheless looked upon as the quintessential crew in these terms—a unit built around Ric Flair as the heel world champion, with guys like Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, Barry Windham, and Ole Anderson around to have his back and thrive in the tag title scene or contending for mid-card championships. It makes kayfabe sense for heels to work together in such a fashion to get the unfair advantage over faces they can outnumber. Moreover, it makes sense from a shoot perspective as a way of spotlighting but still protecting someone like Sid Vicious, setting up rivalries with guys like Sting or Lex Luger, or using the group name in an effort to help younger talents like Paul Roma, Chris Benoit, or Dean Malenko get a leg up. The New World Order followed a similar principle, but saw its numbers swell until the faction dominated the show, and the heel unit, while still more often than not in the main event, also included full-on lower card talent.

It’s no surprise that TNA would pursue booking around a main event heel stable. It’s a well-established model of storytelling, and it was particularly en vogue when TNA launched in 2002, not long after the Attitude Era and The Monday Night War, and closely coinciding with what was arguably one of WWE’s last great main event stables of its own, Evolution. Just the same, now that TNA is rapidly approaching fifteen years old, its remarkable how frequently the promotion has leaned into this trope, and with such varying degrees of success.

So, this week I’m looking back at my picks for the top seven main event heel stables in TNA. I defined main event heel stable roughly, but wanted there to be a fair argument that at least one stable member was meaningfully involved in the main event scene for a significant proportion of the group’s existence. In compiling this countdown, I considered how over the group was, the shoot quality of talent involved, the quality of storylines surrounding it (particularly at the top of the card), and the kayfabe success of the unit. Obviously, most of these factors involve a high degree of subjectivity, so my personal opinion weighs heavily.

#7. Planet Jarrett

In those early days, TNA was clearly a product of its time. The Kings of Wrestling ruled the roost early on, in which Jeff Jarrett aligned himself with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall as top villains. While, in principle, this unit might not sound like such a bad idea, it sort of reeked of Jarrett overestimating his own kayfabe standing, and Hall and Nash were most certainly showing their age, far from the cool cats who had thrived as two-thirds of the original nWo.

Out of the ashes of that group—after Hall left wrestling to deal with his personal demons, and Nash turned face—came Planet Jarrett. I’ll argue at Planet Jarrett’s supremacy over the Kings of Wrestling for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that over the year and a half it was active, Jarrett worked, to reasonable success, in a lot in the main events, and thus got over as a more legitimate face of the ruling heel stable, if not the company on the whole. While the stable was largely hamstrung by leaning on familiar faces from WCW and WWE (Billy Gunn, Scott Steiner) and went longer than it probably should ave, it did also afford some opportunities for fresher faces like Monty Brown to get main event exposure.

#6. Sports Entertainment Xtreme

Though the not so subtly named SEX never laid hands on a world title, they were nonetheless a key cog in TNA’s earliest days, running from winter 2002 through spring 2003, built to rival face champion Jeff Jarrett.

SEX reeked of Vince Russo, from its provocative acronym name to the ongoing storyline that depended on guys turning heel unexpectedly to join the group. While casting Russo as the leader gave the group immediate credibility issues, and cast perennial The Road Dogg and the Harris twins as early players didn’t do a ton for them, the group did gather some steam as it accrued greater numbers and gave way to the fun sub-unit of Triple X—Christopher Daniels, Low Ki, and Elix Skipper.

You can argue that booking an invasion angle so early in a company’s history is a little silly, but I land on the flip side of actually liking that dynamic, because it makes more sense that TNA would be vulnerable in its fledgling state. In any event, the angle helped get TNA off the ground and in addition to ultimately putting Triple X front and center, offered a major push to the guy who would go on to become TNA’s quintessential icon (before going on to be a world champ in WWE), AJ Styles, who refused to join the faction and in the process became a top-level face for the first time.

#5. Fortune

As I referenced in the intro, there’s a real argument to be made that every modern main event heel stable derives from The Four Horsemen. Fortune was TNA’s least subtle homage to that source material, founded when Ric Flair arrived on the scene and became world champion AJ Styles’s heel manager, after which Bobby Roode, James Storm, and Kazarian joined the fold for a team of four workhorse full-time in-ring talents (others would cycle in as time passed).

Fortune loses a little credit for arguably being TNA’s least creative stab at the main event heel stable, not to mention that the group was temporarily absorbed by larger faction Immortal, before they wound up seceding and feuding with them in a convoluted angle (not to mention an uneven effort opposite a crew of ECW alumni). Some fans might knock the group, too, for all of its infighting, particularly when Desmond Wolfe spent a long time on the fringe of the group, only to be not let in and set up a feud, but I’ll support that aspect of Fortune’s run for selling the prestige of the unit, and these wrestlers vying for the opportunity to work with Ric Flair.

#4. Aces and Eights

While no one was especially excited for TNA to launch a new heel stable in 2012, they nonetheless captured the imagination of the audience when a series of mased men launched attacks on TNA’s top stars. Things escalated when Bully Ray was cast a as a top-tier face for the first time, earning the trust of Hulk Hogan and the other top faces.

Aces and Eights moved forward with an odd ebb and flow of genuinely exciting intrigue–the original build, the moment when Bully Ray turned heel and revealed he was in on the Aces and Eights conspiracy from the start—to some really uninspired turns like Devon being revealed as the first stable member to get unmasked, or the group’s early losses which made them feel like less and less of a serious threat.

In the end, the group’s big story was Bully Ray’s push, first as a top face, then as the top heel, in both cases a fresh main eventer who fit the role ably.

#3. Immortal

In 2010, TNA made its truest effort at rivaling WWE, moving its TV show to Monday night, signing an array of stars previously established in WWE and WCW, and rolling the dice. The crown jewel was Immortal.

While TNA had tried the main event heel stable a number of times over, Immortal had a diferent feel about it, featuring Hulk Hogan as its leader and namesake, Eric Bischoff as a figure head, Jeff Hardy as its world champion, and an array of other talents including Ric Flair, Kurt Angle, Jeff Jarrett, and Abyss to fill out its ranks. Sure, the stable felt, in many ways, like an nWo knock off, but for the first time TNA tried to garner that same kind of heat, it actually had the star power to make a go of it.

No, Immortal didn’t ever catch fire to the degree of the nWo, and over its year-and-a-half run suffered from some of TNA’s trademark convoluted booking and double crosses. Just the same, the groupl launched strong with a big reveal at and in the immediate aftermath of Bound for Glory, and didn’t overstay its welcome for too long, culminating in the group splintering, and Eric Bischoff being shown the door after he and his backers lost to a team led by his son in Lethal Lockdown.

#2. Christian’s Coalition

At a minimum, a main event heel stable’s duty is to get and keep the world title on its lead pleayer. A successful stable tends to go that next step in helping to push other talent higher—providing them with interesting storylines and advancing their characters up the card. Through Christian’s Coalition didn’t have the star power, size, or longevity of other stables in TNA, I’d argue it was one of the very best because it kept things simple.

The Coalition’s core members were Christian Cage, AJ Styles, and Tyson Tomko (with Robert Roode as a fringe member who allied with the stable but was never formally indoctrinated). For a quick statistical point, that means two-thirds of the members won TNA’s top title, and went on to win world titles in WWE, which isn’t a bad mark at all.

The stables set up was clear with Christian as the main event star who held the world title for most of the group’s run, with Styles and Tomko as his back up and a successful tag team in its own right. Some of the TNA faithful were justifiably frustrated that TNA mainstay (and past and future main eventer) Styles took a backseat to Christian as a WWE import. In the long term, I’d argue the booking was successful for allowing Styles to show more personality as a heel in a new role, not to mention that he and Tomko balanced one another very well as a supremely talented small guy finding his footing on the mic, and a big guy with an awesome look who needed polish in most other areas.

Looking back, Christian used this big run in TNA as a proving ground after which he returned to a higher profile run in WWE, and Styles emerged from the stable on surer footing for his own main event pursuits in TNA (and eventually elsewhere). Tomko was the only one not to go onto bigger and better things, which is unfortunate because he progressed nicely while part of the stable and for a time actually looked as though he might be a breakout star coming out of the group. Despite that one piece of unrealized potential, this stable that TNA kept itself from over-complicating remains one of the best in the company’s history.

#1. The Main Event Mafia

One of the problems with top heel stables is that they have a tendency to get too big. The impulse makes sense—when a faction gets over, why not try to get as many individual performers over as possible by having them align with the cool group? The trouble is, when a group gets too large, the quality gets diluted, and there’s a tipping point after which a group doesn’t elevate its component pieces, but rather gets dragged down by its weakest links.

The Main Event Mafia is that rare example of a TNA super group that stayed super for its year-plus run. Part of that is in the group’s name—the group was composed of only main event level talents—guys who’d achieved world championship status if not in TNA, then in WWE or WCW—Kurt Angle, Sting, Scott Steiner, Kevin Nash, and Booker T (plus Samoa Joe toward the end of the original run). In not compromising that vision, the group remained elite and exciting. Ultimately, they set up a new take on one of WCW’s last big storylines of The New Blood vs. The Millionaire’s Club. In WCW, the establishment guys were cast as faces, the up and comers as heels. This new take recast the roles in the right direction, with homegrown talent like AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, and Beer Money as the underdog heroes.

While you can question some of the group’s booking, including the in-fighting, the annoying attempt at intrigue in questions about whether Sting was really a heel, and briefly allowing guys like Billy Gunn to ally with them, overall The Main Event Mafia presented a good combination of heel chic, nostalgia, and letting newer talent get over based on established veterans to be a success. The stable was noteworthy enough for TNA to briefly bring back a modified version years later to rival Aces and Eights as faces.

Which stables would you add to the list and how would you order them? Let us know what you think in the comments.