AJ Styles and Tomko are former tag team partners in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) who were a part of two factions together, Christian's Coalition and the Angle Alliance.
In addition to being involved in many a headline match due to their associations with Christian Cage or Kurt Angle, Styles and Tomko are notable in history for their run as TNA World Tag Team Champions. Stopped at 184 days, it stood for three years as the longest run in the history of that championship, and second longest of all tag title runs (only to America's Most Wanted's 250-day sixth reign with the NWA World Tag Team Championship while TNA was still using that title) in the history of the company, until Beer Money, Inc., in the midst of their fourth reign, pushed it back a spot in both categories on July 13, 2011.
History
Formation
By early 2007, after Tomko's then-recent arrival reprising his WWE role as Christian Cage's enforcer resulted in Christian regaining the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, Christian would expand his leadership into a full coalition to enforce his reign. While Scott Steiner would officially come on board as Cage's "consultant", recently turned villain A.J. Styles would align himself with Christian on occasion. Styles and Tomko, however, would have yet to interact, as Styles' appearances alongside Christian came without Tomko present.
Immediately following Destination X 2007, the champion Christian and Kurt Angle were informed by TNA management director Jim Cornette that they would each be captaining five-man teams to compete in a Lethal Lockdown cage match at the upcoming pay-per-view Lockdown. In the upcoming weeks, Christian's Coalition, which had somewhat broken down by Destination X, officially formed for the second time in as many months under the name Team Cage, also including Abyss and Steiner along with Styles and Tomko (the latter whose rejoining finally united the duo), while Team Angle went on to consist of four recent rivals of the Team Cage members (Angle included) and Jeff Jarrett. At the match itself, Team Angle won when Jarrett hit Abyss with a thumbtack-loaded guitar and let Sting make the pin to become number one contender to Cage's title. From there, the collective would systematically betray and destroy Abyss, and eventually Scott Steiner and Tomko's trust issues would cause Steiner to leave to team with his brother Rick, all of which in effect left only Styles and Tomko to carry on together behind Cage as Christian's Coalition.
Growing Feuds
Tension would develop between Styles, Tomko, and Cage heading into the King of the Mountain match at Slammiversary, which all three men were in qualifying for. On May 31, 2007, Styles had originally been scheduled to face Jeff Jarrett in a qualifying match, but since Jarrett couldn't appear due to his wife's death, Tomko was put in his place. Styles defeated Tomko thanks to "botched" interference from Christian Cage, causing tension between Tomko and Cage, later resolved on the June 7 episode. On the June 14, 2007 episode of Impact, Styles and Tomko showed that they were once again a united front, helping Cage defeat Abyss by disqualification to get into King of the Mountain after Abyss hit him with a steel chair. The group came out empty-handed at Slammiversary, and Styles and Tomko lost to Sting and Abyss in a tag team match at the following pay-per-view, Victory Road.
After being attacked by Judas Mesias and the Robert Roode-assisted Coalition, Sting and Abyss overcame Styles and Cage to secure a contract for an Abyss vs. Christian match at Hard Justice 2007 with the help of the TNA debut of "The Punisher" Andrew Martin to counteract Tomko's Coalition enforcer role. On the Impact! prior to Hard Justice, Jim Cornette announced that Christian's Coalition would take on Abyss, Sting and Andrew Martin in a Doomsday Chamber of Blood match, a barbed wire steel cage match in which a person could only be pinned once they were bleeding, at Hard Justice in which the wrestler who scores the pinfall for his team in the match would receive the next title shot at the TNA World Heavyweight Championship. At Hard Justice, Styles was pinned by Abyss as the Coalition lost. Styles and Tomko next accompanied Christian in his feud with Samoa Joe over who the "real World Heavyweight Champion" was.