Though Kurt Angle has been a part of many interesting angles during his time in WWE both before and after announcing his retirement, one of the groups he actually founded and spend a not-insignificant period of his career in was the Main Event Mafia, a faction of largely ex-WWE performer in TNA who banded together from 2008-09 and again in 2013.

Was the group successful? By TNA standards, sure, they were featured heavily on the promotion's weekly Spike TV show and sold a good bit of merch to the fans as a result, but they never quite reached the same level of popularity as NWO, DX, or even the Bullet Club, which was led at one point by Mr. TNA himself, AJ Styles.

Why, you may ask, did Angle believe that the group never quite reached its full potential? Well, because they didn't come out of the gate with Sting as a member, with the “Icon” easing his way into the group instead of jumping in head-first, as he explained on his eponymous podcast.

“We needed Sting; we knew we needed Sting,” Angle said via Wrestling Inc. “He was the one guy who had more experience than anybody else. I believe Kevin formulated that group thinking of Sting first … It was really difficult for Sting to do this. He took to it pretty well, but I know that he was uncomfortable because he's never done it before, and he was always a babyface, and the people always adored him.”

Would the Main Event Mafia have worked out better had it debuted with a makeup-less Sting leading the way? Yes, it most certainly would have, but in the end, Sting eventually joined the group and even brought it back in 2013 to help fight off the Aces & Eights. While it may not be the highlight of basically anyone in the faction's careers – save maybe Traci Brooks – it did happen, and folks are still talking about it on a podcast a decade later, which is more than fans can say of most things in wrestling.

Kurt Angle explains why turning Sting heel is almost impossible.

Elsewhere in his podcasting tour de force, Kurt Angle discussed the challenges of making Sting a heel and why it never quite worked when he was a member of the Main Event Mafia.

“I don’t think of Sting as a heel. It just doesn’t happen,” Angle said via Fightful. “He was such a babyface his whole entire career. I don’t even know if he turned heel in WCW, not what I can remember. It was really difficult for Sting to do this. He took to it pretty well, but I know that he was uncomfortable because he’s never done it before, and he was always a babyface, and the people always adored him, the fans loved him, so it was a little difficult, I’d imagine, for Sting to do this.”

While Angle and company really wanted to get over Sting as a bad guy, the “Olympic Hero” admitted that getting it done was “almost impossible” because the crowd just loved him so darn much.

“It was almost impossible [laughs],” Angle said. “Whenever he would come out alone, they were cheering him. When we all came out as a group, they booed us somewhat. But Sting, it’s just almost impossible to make him a heel.”

So after spending over 20 years largely working as a babyface, how did it feel for Sting to suddenly become a heel tasked with getting booed and being hated by crowds all over the world? Well, as it turns out, ditching the makeup wasn't as easy as some may have thought, as he wondered, as Angle recalls it, if fans would think he looked “like an idiot.”

“He did make a remark to me once,” Angle said. “He was like, ‘Dude, I don’t know how I look without makeup. I don’t know if look like an idiot.’ I said, ‘Sting, you look great, man, and you’re speaking well. You’re communicating incredibly well. I don’t know why he was a little nervous about not having the face paint on. But you have to remember, he had it on for years, his whole career. So taking it off is like being naked.”

What will fans remember most from Sting's time in Impact? Will it be his initial return? His time in the Main Event Mafia? Or maybe his run as Joker Sting, where he once again took influence from a famous movie character to kick his wrestling schtick into another gear? In the opinion of most, it's probably option number three, but then again, who knows, maybe there are a few Main Event Mafia holdouts who are hoping for a third iteration to come to Impact.