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TNA wrestling is setting up the building blocks for a new wrestling faction called Fortune, since Ric Flair announced a couple of weeks ago that he would be setting up a new group similar to the Four Horseman in WCW. The Four Horseman was a group that consisted of Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, Ole Anderson and future members joining the group like Barry Windham. They were the most dominate group in WCW and Georgia Championship Wrestling in the 1980’s. They went on to win many World Titles and were the best heel faction of that time. A lot of wrestling critics believe the Four Horseman were the most successful and influential group in wrestling that would help lead to other wrestling factions being created in wrestling like the New World Order, DX and Evolution.
The idea of the Four Horseman was to have 4 heels, which had all the money, women and championships at there will causing havoc wherever they went, beating down the baby faces and causing riots in the crowd.
Ric Flair was the leader of the group and was the main figure head of the group, where he would be the one with the main NWA title, with the group trying to protect Flair and help him cheat to keep the title at any costs. Wrestling fans got really behind this group because at the time they were cool and everyone wanted to be like them. JJ Dillion was the manager of the group and was influential in building the alliance of the group and went on to be successful for 3 years. Other groups have been created before with Ric Flair being in every group, but have not been successful since the original four and now in TNA it looks likely they are going to try and replicate this all over again.
It is important to realise that trying to replicate something from the past never seems to work in this decade. This storyline has been used a number of times and has worked when forming a heel faction group. The NWO was one of the best storylines in the mid 1990’s and transformed wrestling, when Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash aligned with each other, but after a while it went stale. Evolution was a successful storyline, where Triple H led Ric Flair, Randy Orton and Batista for a couple of years, where they dominated the WWE. But trying to create the Four Horseman again will need a lot of work and time to allow the fans to gain an understanding about what the new group is being created for and what their goals are in TNA?
The new group looks like it will be Ric Flair as the manager, head spokesman and also part time wrestler for the new group. The group at the moment is not fully confirmed, but it looks like it will consist of Robert Roode, James Storm, Kazarian and AJ Styles. These guys are considered to be some of the most talented wrestlers in the world, with AJ Styles being in a class of his own, but still lacking that one big push to become a huge player within TNA and wrestling. Robert Roode and James Storm are a strong tag team, working together for the last 2 and a half years becoming one of the most successful tag team in TNA. With Kazarian he is a very talented wrestler and is one of the best high flyers in the company, but he does lack something that makes him different from those three. I think Desmond Wolfe would be the ideal person to be part of the Fortune heel group, because he is great on the mic, more talented, with an old school, technical wrestling background and has more of the style to be a member than
Kazarian.
The group will need a massive run and long term stability if it is to be a success, but the problem with the way TNA books its talent, is they don’t know how to put over the talent. This is a major factor because good booking is crucial for keeping the heel group strong and will help them become more over with the fans, potentially becoming a bigger act. TNA has created a series of factions, which have not been successful. They have created factions like the Main Event Mafia, The Kings of Wrestling and Jeff Jarrett’s Army. The problem is none of these kicked off, and struggled to really make an Impact in the company. But the Main Event Mafia did have the best run out of these three groups but struggled to get over because they were all old. The reason for the success at the start was because the group had a reason for forming, with the new generation not respecting the older wrestlers, forming the group of Kurt Angle, Kevin Nash, Scott Steiner, Sting and Booker T.
I don’t have high hopes for this new heel faction in TNA, with the ECW invasion about to take place. So it will be hard for Fortune to really make a stamp in TNA. But I do hope this statement is wrong because it is crucial for wrestling that something does make a change and allow for major movement in the heel side of things. Wrestling has been lacking top heels lately and is a major problem because a heel makes a top baby face draw and this heel group does need to be put over as legit bad men. In the next edition of the Greenfield Review, more focus will be made to the Victory Road PPV, where I am certain lots of major news will be coming out of the show.
