The New Main Event Mafia Sting, Kurt Angle, Samoa Joe, Magnus & Rampage Jackson!

[GameOver]

So it's still anyone on the current roster and thats fine, they don't need new people to feed they can't even support those they already have and keep promising careers via gutcheck.

Wonder how this will all play into rumours of Sting leaving at the end of his contract this year. Tho i doubt that is the case since they only just restarted MEM which would be dumb if they new he wasn't going to re-sign.


as for the members well Magnus, Sting and Angle are a perfect fit they look the part but Joe hasn't been relevant in years, i can see Sabin joining so they have a current XDivision star and then they need a tag team and it's a typical stable with one person for each division. Can anyone see a major issue with butting heads tho? Joe talks how the MEM are going to back him in his quest of the title in the BFG series, what about Magnus he's top of the table so he wont get backed aswell? and they helped Sabin who would also be going for that World Title

 

[It's Damn Real!]

So it's still anyone on the current roster and thats fine, they don't need new people to feed they can't even support those they already have and keep promising careers via gutcheck.

Wonder how this will all play into rumours of Sting leaving at the end of his contract this year. Tho i doubt that is the case since they only just restarted MEM which would be dumb if they new he wasn't going to re-sign.


as for the members well Magnus, Sting and Angle are a perfect fit they look the part but Joe hasn't been relevant in years, i can see Sabin joining so they have a current XDivision star and then they need a tag team and it's a typical stable with one person for each division. Can anyone see a major issue with butting heads tho? Joe talks how the MEM are going to back him in his quest of the title in the BFG series, what about Magnus he's top of the table so he wont get backed aswell? and they helped Sabin who would also be going for that World Title

I'm not sure that'd matter right away. Sting already noted that the goal of the group is to rid TNA of Aces & Eights and to get the title off Bully Ray, so naturally you want as many options as possible to do so.

If they run with the story more and more, you can end up with a mutiny over the jealousy of one guy winning the title over another, but as it stands at the moment I'm not sure that's really an issue at all.

 

[New Hot Fed]

Pretty much exactly this. I mean, I did say it in my original post but since it wasn't comprehended, I'll explain further.

If we're using the newest incarnation of Batman, he is seen as a villain by some, if not nearly all OF GOTHAM after Harvey Dent's death. However, the VIEWING PUBLIC never saw him as anything other than the hero. We know that he didn't kill Dent. We even know that he TOLD COMMISSIONER GORDON TO LET PEOPLE THINK HE IS THE VILLAIN SO THEY WILL STILL THINK OF DENT AS THE HERO. Batman is thinking of the greater good and is never about himself, his ego, or anything else. That is about as prototypical babyface as you can get.

Now lets look at Sting. While many IN WCW thought he joined the nWo, he never did. The fact that his friends thought he betrayed them made Sting upset and he went away for a while. The VIEWING PUBLIC on the other hand knew that Sting never betrayed WCW and was always a good guy. He beat up the nWo and screamed "is that good enough for you?" before ultimately going away for a while, leaving as a babyface unhappy that his friends don't trust him. When he finally attacked again, he attacked the nWo, proving to the idiot announcers and WCW what the VIEWING PUBLIC knew all along, that Sting IS A GOOD GUY.

And then there's AJ. His promo last week was basically "I am a heel, boo me." He's fought only babyfaces, caused said babyfaces to not fight the Aces and Eights, and the only times he's talked, he's said that it's about him and him only (selfishness) and that he's about the money (greed). Everything about him is a heel and he's nothing like Batman or Sting.

Thus, he can't and should not have anything to do with the Mafia. Wouldn't surprise me if he started feuding with them actually. After all, that's what heels do, they fight babyfaces.

Just read your post. Difference between people's reaction to AJ compared to Sting in the late 90s:

Sting let his friends get beat up in the cage but it was in direct reaction to them having "betrayed him". While AJ let his friends like Storm get beat up just cause he can. AJ is fighting babyfaces in the ring while Sting never did that, he stayed in the rafters. Secondly, Sting was a man with a plan while with AJ it's just feels like the man is brooding and is selfish in his delusions. So he comes off more heelish.

We could say AJ has had it a lot harder than Sting given that you had months and months of Daniels and Kaz playing mind games with him, enough to make a grown man insane. But the public has forgotten about that in some way. Since what AJ is going through is more than just about Kaz and Daniels. It's bigger than that but it's not clearly defined? So it confuses them.

Still I think his whole darker avenging character is very anti-hero, his style is harsher, more ruthless. In one way you can say it screams heel but he's so badass that you cannot boo this guy. He has all the best moves in TNA right now.

 

[Terry Gyimah]

As for who the fifth member should be for the Main Event Mafia should they get to 5 members, well you already have your 4 members in Sting, Angle, Joe and Magnus but for the fifth I would have said Matt Morgan but TNA just released him so how about Crimson?

 

[It's Damn Real!]

Crimson was already released as well during the wave of cuts TNA made last week, along with Joey Ryan, Taeler Hendrix and one or two others, so he's out as well.

My guess is the last spot goes to Chris Sabin, who gives the MEM a direct shot at taking the World Title off Bully Ray and an X Division competitor to give them a body in every class (Joe and Magnus in the tag division, Angle in the heavyweight).

 

[Zeven_Zion]

Crimson was already released as well during the wave of cuts TNA made last week, along with Joey Ryan, Taeler Hendrix and one or two others, so he's out as well.

My guess is the last spot goes to Chris Sabin, who gives the MEM a direct shot at taking the World Title off Bully Ray and an X Division competitor to give them a body in every class (Joe and Magnus in the tag division, Angle in the heavyweight).

I'm thinking they'll go that route as well, however, if MEM's purpose is to dethrone Bully and AJ Styles ends up doing it instead, where does that leave MEM? Are we going to get a Champion AJ and MEM running the rest of A&8's out of town? What happens to MEM then? They have to break up somehow and people need to turn heel?

Maybe this is stupid but I think it'd be kind of cool if the whole stable turns heel in some fashion, trying to get the belt off of AJ Styles who holds no allegiance to anyone. It reminds me of the ending of the latest dMc game. Dante and Virgil are done with their little crusade on the bad guys, they look over the clean horizon, they're done and Virgil goes "Now it's ours for the taking", revealing an egotistical plot Dante didn't anticipate since they've fought side by side. It's not even bad, it's just how Virgil sees it and it makes sense.

Maybe, if MEM cleans house and rids TNA of the Aces and Eights, they might see this as an opportunity to reign over TNA and take over since there's no one to fight them. The cool trend with bad guys nowadays seems to be a type of bad guy whose agenda is actually not TRULY bad. Like Virgil's from dMc or more recently Zod's from Man of Steel. Zod simply tries to preserve his race, however it clashes with another good agenda. The difference between the two is the approach.

If MEM's argument is that they want to reign over TNA and hold all the belts in order to protect it from groups such as Aces and Eights or Immortal (or themselves since they did try to do it once as well) ever trying to take over again, then this is actually a good agenda that makes sense. However, if the way they approach it is through brute force and they try to take out good guys to do it, then this is where the dissonance happens, just like in Man of Steel and even in Star Trek: Into Darkness. Perhaps if they reveal this idea to Sting, Sting might be against it completely so Kurt, Magnus, Joe and Sabin turn on him, maybe replacing him with a returning Jeff Jarrett, since there's no way people will boo Sting. They would boo Kurt. Kurt could get booed in his parents' living room if he felt like it.

Then they go off on a hunt for AJ who opposes their idea of a new TNA eutopia. This might solidify AJ as a true badass since usually it's just one guy going after him but now it's an entire stable. If five dudes come after you, you're some kind of badass. No stable wars, just AJ fighting off a bunch of assholes. Maybe if someone tries to help him he attacks them too. Seems like something AJ would do these days. Heck, it'll be even better if they eventually cost him the belt and he's the one doing the chasing. Angle and Jarrett certainly have a great track record as villains to pull it off, I'd say Joe does as well and I bet Magnus would be a better heel.

I don't know, just brainstorming and doing a bit of fan fiction myself for once.

 

[PrinceMarvel]

I know Rampage was said to be their last MEMber, but I'm still holding out hope for more, either that or just have a fe associates, sort of what the original MEM had.

As far as my theory of how the MEM was selecting their MEMbers, I think it would be cool if they all had the collective idea to recruit Rampage Jackson.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

Well, Jackson is the fifth member of the MEM and I have a feeling that that this was done in the hopes of jacking up ratings for next week's show. Given that this will be Jackson's first time as part of a wrestling match live on television, it should draw a hefty amount of interest. Unless Jackson is some sort of pro wrestling savant, I doubt he's gotten much of anything down pat when it comes to his training. However, I'm guessing that he'll be able to do enough to briefly hold his own during MEM's fight against Aces & Eights next week. As long as they keep him in briefly, let him do his thing and he's able to look like a badass while doing it, things should be fine. Otherwise, it might turn into a train wreck.

 

[MisterRob]

They really shouldn't have brought back the Main Event Mafia. It wasn't even successful in its first incarnation, why bring something like that back again? And the reasoning of the whole thing doesn't make much sense, considering none of the guys in the group ever came to the aide of Sting BEFORE.

I think it would've been better to have given this whole angle to others, up and coming talent who need the spot. Sting and Kurt Angle definitely don't need to be involved in this. They should've kept Kurt Angle and Rampage Jackson out of this whole civil war angle and just built up their rivlary on the side, between the two guys, which would have been FAR better then convoluting them into this whole stable war angle.

I think, if they were going to bring a stable back, they should've brought back Fortune. They should have never done the whole AJ Styles Crow angle, which doesn't make sense and isn't really working in my eyes.. instead they should've had Fortune reunite, even if it was just alligning themselves together in a shakey and tense stable for the greater good of getting rid of Aces & Eights. They wouldn't have even needed to be some tight knit group, but they could've come together because they all share the same goal of getting rid of the Aces & Eights. AJ Styles, Bobby Roode, James Storm.. all of these guys should be involved more and doing more with the top angle right now. They could've even added in Austin Aries. Hell, Samoa Joe and Magnus could've been involved in Fortune, and then you have a far better stable of young guys who need the angle and need to be given the spot over old veterans who get nothing from this entire angle liike Sting and Kurt Angle.

The entire thing could've been just used to further develop those younger stars and make them the spotlight of the company. The stable doesn't even have to be successful in defeating the Aces & Eights. It could've already added more layers with them all in the Bound for Glory series under the guise of eliminating the Aces & Eights and taking the title from Bully Ray, but you also have the tensions between the stable members and guys like Bobby Roode and Austin Aries sneaking wins for themselves.

The whole thing could've built AJ Styles far better as the top guy and the one to end Bully Ray's reign, while also making the Bound for Glory series more interesting. Imagine if the end was AJ Styles and Bobby Roode (or Ausitn Aries) near tied and one last match deciding who would face Bully Ray. Then you'd have the stable agreeing who needed to win, and it could be built for AJ Styles to be the savior and the chosen one everyone believes could beat Bully.. but Bobby Roode (or Austin Aries) betrays that and goes out for himself in the match, only for James Storm to interfere during the match and make sure AJ Styles wins. That sets up AJ Styles to dethrone Bully Ray, while ending the Fortune stable/alliance in a way that makes sense and has a CONCLUSION, while also reigniting a feud between Bobby Roode and James Storm.

Instead you have this mish mash of guys in Main Event Mafia that are nothing to get excited over, in an angle that really doesn't make much sense, led by Sting who doesn't need to be involved. Hell, he could've been involved in bringing back Fortune, but in a mentor role/guidance role, instead of actually being involved in matches and part of the physical stable.

Instead you have James Storm doing nothing, thrown in a forgettable tag team. He should be better then that and doing more then that.

Instead you have Bobby Roode just floating along in the Bound for Glory series, with no real storyline or anything interesting happening.

Instead you have Austin Aries used to build up Chris Sabin just so he can lose to Bully Ray (and he IS going to lose, anyone who thinks Sabin has a chance of being World champion is out of their mind), and then Aries will be set aside to doing nothing like the others.

And instead you have AJ Styles as this lone wolf, because he didn't want to be the savior of TNA for reasons that either aren't there or make no sense, developing a Crow-like character that just isn't working. Will he be the one chosen to dethrone Bully Ray? Maybe... but it doesn't seem a very effective or exciting storyline if he does, the way they've done it.

That’s my opinion. Not interested or liking this Main Event Mafia storyline at all. It's a missed opportunity at something far more interesting in my eyes, and a misuse of people involved in the whole angle, like Kurt Angle and Rampage Jackson.

 

[Dum Dum Dudley]

They really shouldn't have brought back the Main Event Mafia. It wasn't even successful in its first incarnation, why bring something like that back again? And the reasoning of the whole thing doesn't make much sense, considering none of the guys in the group ever came to the aide of Sting BEFORE.

I think it would've been better to have given this whole angle to others, up and coming talent who need the spot. Sting and Kurt Angle definitely don't need to be involved in this. They should've kept Kurt Angle and Rampage Jackson out of this whole civil war angle and just built up their rivlary on the side, between the two guys, which would have been FAR better then convoluting them into this whole stable war angle.


Instead you have this mish mash of guys in Main Event Mafia that are nothing to get excited over, in an angle that really doesn't make much sense, led by Sting who doesn't need to be involved. Hell, he could've been involved in bringing back Fortune, but in a mentor role/guidance role, instead of actually being involved in matches and part of the physical stable.

Instead you have James Storm doing nothing, thrown in a forgettable tag team. He should be better then that and doing more then that.

Instead you have Bobby Roode just floating along in the Bound for Glory series, with no real storyline or anything interesting happening.

Instead you have Austin Aries used to build up Chris Sabin just so he can lose to Bully Ray (and he IS going to lose, anyone who thinks Sabin has a chance of being World champion is out of their mind), and then Aries will be set aside to doing nothing like the others.

And instead you have AJ Styles as this lone wolf, because he didn't want to be the savior of TNA for reasons that either aren't there or make no sense, developing a Crow-like character that just isn't working. Will he be the one chosen to dethrone Bully Ray? Maybe... but it doesn't seem a very effective or exciting storyline if he does, the way they've done it.

That’s my opinion. Not interested or liking this Main Event Mafia storyline at all. It's a missed opportunity at something far more interesting in my eyes, and a misuse of people involved in the whole angle, like Kurt Angle and Rampage Jackson.

I highlighted the main parts I agreed with because I can't fault your logic. The first part is the real kicker for me. No-one on the current roster comes to Sting's aid so barring one guy, his stable is made of... the current roster. I know they can't just give Sting a stable of new debutants, but then creative shouldn't be writing themselves into corners they can't get out of.

The second part is the members and the name. The original MEM were former world champions, and the new incarnation involved Magnus who isn't. They have a former albeit short reigned world champion on the roster in James Storm who is barely doing anything that could have done with the rub. That way, you can have Magnus' focus be the Bound For Glory series and let him stand out via that. It's going to be hard to Magnus to stand out amongst three former world champions, 2 HOF members and a former UFC champion.

There's talent in the roster such as Roode, Aries, and Storm that aren't really doing anything to facilitate a stable that feels like its been thrown together.

I'm not a fan of TNA's stables because members bounce between them and they never create an identity as a 'insert stable name' guy. Anderson is formerly of Immortal but now he's in A&8. Which stable do you think people will remember him from when his name is mentioned in 2 years time? Styles is a former member of TNA frontline and Fourtune but then Fourtune was incorporated into Immortal. So where is Styles stable identity? Flair = Horsemen. Hogan = NWO. Hart = Hart Foundation. If you're jumping between stables you don't create any meaningful history.

This is only my opinion but I can't really see where this new reincarnation of MEM can go and I think if anything, it may hinder a guy like Magnus. Would rather see him go through the BFG series like Roode/Hardy did and have the focus be the title, not the A&8.