10 Criminally Underrated Wrestler/Manager Combos

6. AJ Styles/Ric Flair

In retrospect, it was the crappiest of all crappy ideas for TNA to give AJ Styles a little diamond earring, let him borrow one of Ric Flair's robes and have him strut around saying 'Woooooooo!'. Short of dying his hair blonde, this was as thinly-veiled a forced transformation as it could be.

As true as that is, it must be said that, at the beginning, Flair working ringside for AJ was awesome.

Fans knew their company was about to change when Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff and a whole boatload of former WWE and WCW talent converged on the roster. Therefore, seeing an icon like Flair recognise Styles as the face of the company and the guy he wanted to associate with gave AJ added star power.

It was star power he could back up in-ring, and everyone knew it. Whenever you revisit the glory days of TNA before things got rather messy, make sure to have another glance at the first month or so of that Ric and Styles connection. You'll be surprised how solid parts of it were.