Sting is a professional wrestler. His real name is Steve Borden,
and he is from
Venice Beach,
California.
Borden was working as a private trainer at a Gold's Gym in California
while also entering bodybuilding contests along with Jim Hellwig, who would
later be known as the Ultimate Warrior. The two were discovered
and taught the basics of professional wrestling by Ric Bassman, and they
soon started wrestling in some of California's independent leagues.
They first formed "Power Team USA" with two other wrestlers, which was
notable only for having the future Sting and future Ultimate Warrior
in it. When the team dissolved in early 1986, Borden and Hellwig
remained a team--they renamed themselves the Blade Runners, with Borden
becoming "Blade Runner Flash" while Hellwig was "Blade Runner Rock".
Could I make this up if I tried?
Borden had moved on to the NWA by 1987; he was wrestling as Sting
by this time. He was almost immediately pushed into a main event
feud with Ric Flair, who was the NWA World Champion at the time.
The two met at the first Clash of the Champions in March 1988, wrestling
to a time limit draw. He continued to feud with the rest of the Four
Horsemen (of which Flair was the leader) for the next few months (or the
next ten years, depending on how you look at it).
Sting won his first NWA World Title in June 1990, beating Ric Flair
at Clash of the Champions XI in a terrific match. He would go on
to defend his title against Flair and Sid Vicious, among others, in the
coming months. He wouldn't drop the title until January 1991, when
he lost the belt back to Flair.
(The NWA becomes WCW at this point)
One of Sting's best matches came in May 1991, when he and partner Lex
Luger took on the Steiner Brothers for the WCW Tag Team Championship.
All four were babyfaces at the time, which always makes for an unorthodox
match. The Steiners retained the titles when Nikita Koloff interfered.
Later in 1991, Sting would be elevated to new hights by Cactus
Jack, a new addition to WCW. The two men would have a series of
wild brawls that saw both men get insanely over with the crowd in the process.
Fast forward to 1996, when Scott Hall and Kevin Nash "invaded"
WCW in what would be the kickoff to the amazing nWo angle. Sting
joined with Lex Luger and Randy Savage in challenging the Outsiders
to a match at Bash at the Beach '96--the famous match where Hulk Hogan
turned heel and formed the nWo with Hall and Nash.
After a bizzare and stupid "Fake Sting" angle which I can't even bring
myself to type, Sting disappeared for a few weeks and re-emerged with
a darker persona--similar to The Crow. He wore black clothes with
white facepaint and hung out in the rafters of the arena looking menacing
a lot and randomly attacking the nWo. He would use this gimmick
for the remainder of his WCW run.
He didn't wrestle for much of 1997, just doing the aforementioned "hanging
out in the rafters acting mysterious and foreboding" thing for months at
a time. This was because of WCW's ridiculous guaranteed contract
system, which only required their bigger stars to wrestle a certain number
of matches in order to get paid. Sting had fulfilled his quota by
September of 1996, and so he basically got paid for doing very little for
the next year and there was nothing WCW could do about it.
His big return in late 1997 was a feud with Hulk Hogan, built around
WCW's biggest show of the year--Starrcade. Although common sense
would suggest that your biggest babyface star should beat the hated heel
from pillar to post and win the WCW World Title to blowoff the feud,
but WCW has never had much common sense. Sting did win the match,
but only after being made to look extremely weak throughout the entire
match. This was a bigger screwjob than I've ever seen in any blowoff
match, and I've seen most of them. And, just as the nail in the
coffin, the decision was overturned a week later and Hogan became champion
again.
It was all downhill from there, as Sting would remain extremely popular--and
would win the WCW World Title on a couple more occasions--but would never
be able to stay in the main events for any significant length of time.
He stayed until the end, wrestling Ric Flair in the last match of
the final taping of WCW Nitro on March 26, 2001, after which time WCW
as a seperate entity ceased to be--the company had been bought out by the
WWF the previous day. Sting remained loyal to the end, wrestling for
them for 12 years without ever going to another company no matter how bad the conditions within WCW were.. Even Ric
Flair went to the WWF for a year in 1992.
Career Highlights
-
NWA TV Champion
-
NWA World Champion
-
Winner of the Battle Bowl 1991
-
2 time WCW International Champion
-
2 time WCW US Champion
-
2 time WCW Tag Team Champion
-
6 time WCW World Champion
Fun Fact: Steve Borden owns the
Sting trademark, not the musical Sting. Borden amicably lets him use it without putting up a fuss.