The Man Called Sting

The first wrestling magazine I ever bought was a 1988 edition of Pro Wrestling Illustrated with a strangely painted man on the cover. The magazine screamed “Win a phone call from STING” and I naturally assumed they meant, for whatever reason, the singer. It was only when I read the mag (from cover to cover) that I discovered that the man with the painted face WAS Sting. He wrestled for a group called the NWA which wasn’t the same as the WWF that I watched. That magazine was an eye opening experience. I must’ve read it over and over again. I took it to France during my one and only school trip to the continent. I lost it not long after and the only thing I can remember in detail was that there was this colourful guy in the NWA called Sting.

Sting became a star in 1988 when Ric Flair carried him to a reportedly excellent 45 minute draw. I say reportedly because WCW misfiled the tape of the broadcast in their Atlanta warehouse and no one has been able to find it since. WWE wanted to put it on their recent Ric Flair DVD set but found only a few clips on a TV show and had to use one of the other three billion Flair vs Sting bouts instead. Back then Sting had short peroxide blond hair and wore every colour under the sun. He was one of the two men that the NWA (later WCW) hoped would be the new Hulk Hogan. Lots of people have been the new Hulk Hogan over the years and of all of them, the original Hulk Hogan is the only one still in the business.

Sting holds a unique place in wrestling history over the past twenty years. I have strained my mental 286 and cannot think of a single major name from the last 20 years of US wrestling, aside from Sting, who has never worked a Wrestlemania. Obviously Goldberg hasn’t yet but unless he gets struck by lightning or cold feet he will face Brock Lesnar in just over a month's time. All the big WWF names did – Hogan, Piper, Savage, Andre, Backlund, Austin, Rock, HHH, Undertaker and so on. All the big WCW stars did too – Nash, Rhodes, Hall, Flair, Steamboat, Luger, Page, Sid and more. Only Sting stands alone as a man never to appear at the biggest show of all.

But why am I writing about Sting when I’ve already established that he’s not in the game anymore. Well, I happened across a tape last week of an old Monday Nitro. It was April 2000 and WCW shut down for a week to draw a line under the old management regime and herald in the Bischoff / Russo era. They put together a history of Nitro broadcast and interspersed it with Mark Madden and Tony Schiavone telling us how Eric Bischoff was a genius. The segment on Sting was the most impressive part. In September 1996 Sting ditched the colours altogether following an angle where he appeared to join the nWo. WCW turned their backs on him and, when it was exposed as a ruse by the nWo, Sting told WCW they could stick it. He became the Crow. He’d be seen in the rafters of the arenas, often with a bird of prey on his arm. Sometimes – just sometimes – he would fall from the sky to save WCW from the nWo assault only to disappear again before anyone could thank him. He was the ultimate lone wolf and it was insanely cool. I’d never liked the bleached blond Sting. It was too campy for me. But the gothic Sting was fantastic. He needed no one but his baseball bat and he knew no fear. The silent superhero.

WCW’s problem had been that the nWo were supposed to be the bad guys but the fans adored them. The worse they behaved, the more they were cheered. WCW’s good guys were seen as uncool and they quickly politicked to join the nWo themselves leaving WCW helpless and defeated. Sting changed all that because the fans placed him above the nWo. If anyone could rebuild the image of WCW it was Sting. Hulk Hogan wouldn’t play ball and what should’ve been Sting’s night of glory became a controversial and indecisive victory at Starrcade 97. Rematches happened but Hogan never passed him the torch and with each outing the fans saw more evidence that Sting had lost his ring talents. Fifteen months on the sidelines had sapped him of his passion to perform to the highest level. Being paid millions of dollars to do nothing will do that to a man. He realised that he would be paid the same no matter how hard (or not) he tried and he became lazy. What took fifteen months to build took only a few weeks to destroy. Sting was back in the position of a guy people would accept as a top star but not THE top star. Much like HHH today.

Sting instead focused his energies on backstage manoeuvring. He became part of the ruling clique and ensured he never had to do much for his money in the future. He became a born again Christian and lost what little interest he still had in the wrestling business. Aside from a few well paid TNA shots he hasn’t wrestled since the final Monday Nitro way back in March 2001. It is entirely possible he could join WWE in the future but I for one hope he doesn’t. The fatal combination of his unsalvageable apathy and WWE’s inability to correctly handle outside stars means the whole thing would be a horrible mess for everyone involved.

So Sting became a paradox – people didn’t want to see him wrestle. But no one will pay to see a wrestler not wrestle. At least not in the long term. And lest you think it was a one off, way back in 1990 when he was out for six months with a knee injury he was a much bigger star than he was when he came back, won the world title and then had a dismal reign as champion. He was a victory of style over substance but, unless you’re Hulk Hogan, sooner or later you need substance to be a success in this business.

9th February 2004