WWE
At this year’s Survivor Series wrestling fans were treated to a truly unforgettable moment when Sting officially entered a WWE ring for the first time to help propel Team Cena to victory over Team Authority. A good percentage of the fans in attendance had probably seen very little of his work, and yet they instinctively knew that this man called Sting was a player. He was important.
A staple of WCW and later TNA, Sting shone just as brightly as any WWE/F star despite spending nearly his entire career on the wrong side of Vince McMahon’s ongoing war with the rest of the wrestling world. Nothing, not bad booking, politics or changing times could keep The Stinger down – if anything, it all helped forge him into one of the greatest good guys in wrestling history. Any wrestler will tell you, being a fan favorite is harder than playing the heel, and yet Sting has done it better than anybody for over 25-years, even when suffering through personal turmoils behind the scenes.
Here’s a few things you may not know about the life of the one and only Sting…
1) Hulk Hogan was responsible for Sting getting into the wrestling business. Sting, aka Steve Borden, did not grow up watching wrestling, and in his early-20s had absolutely no interest in getting into the business. Bodybuilding was young Steve’s thing and he spent most of his time working out in a Gold’s Gym near Venice Beach. One fateful day former NWA Tag Team Champion Red Bastien came into the gym looking to recruit members for a new musclehead wrestling stable called Powerteam USA, and he immediately set his sights on the man not yet called Sting. Bastien would try the hard sell numerous times, but Borden had absolutely no connection to wrestling, and thus no interest.
StrengthFighter.com
Two of these guys became world champions, the other two quit within months. Not a bad ratio, Powerteam USA.
That all changed when a certain blonde, mustachioed WWF Champion started regularly showing up at the gym. The soon-to-be Sting could sense Hogan’s success, and later saw him as Thunderlips in Rocky III, leading him to think that maybe, just maybe, this wrestling thing might be for him. Borden would finally take Bastien up on his offer, train under him and, after a few more bumps in the road, become one of the most prosperous wrestlers of all time. Despite that success, Sting still maintains that he doesn’t really watch wrestling and never has, so it’s a good thing one of the most important wrestlers ever just happened to mosey into his gym.
2) Sting began his career as Ultimate Warrior’s partner in a Blade Runner-themed tag team. Powerteam USA didn’t stick around for long because, well, they were just four jacked-up dudes plucked from random gyms and given a bare minimal amount of training, so they weren’t very good, but the two most promising guys from the team found their way to Jerry Jarrett’s Continental Wrestling Association in Memphis. Who were these two guys you ask? Well, one was obviously Steve Borden, and the other was Jim Hellwig, aka the future Ultimate friggin’ Warrior.
Initially the duo were known as The Freedom Fighters with Hellwig going by Justice and Steve going by Flash (because “Flash Borden”, get it?) The Memphis crowd, used to cheering for chubby dudes in crowns, turned on the beefy Freedom Fighters but quick, so they went heel, started painting their faces, changed their team name to The Blade Runners and their individual names to Sting and Rock. Yup, the Ultimate Warrior was the Rock back when Dwayne Johnson was still in middle school. The Blade Runners would last less than a year before breaking up, with Hellwig leaving for WCCW in Texas en route to WWF, and Sting doing a short stint in UWF in Louisiana before joining the NWA/WCW. Despite the relatively short tenure of their tag team Sting and Warrior would remain close friends until Warrior’s untimely death this past year.
UWF/WWE
Two brash young dorks, ready to take on the world.
3) Sting was also Rick Steiner’s first tag team partner. Speaking of unexpected tag team partners, believe it or not, Rick Steiner’s first tag team partner wasn’t his brother Scott, but the Stinger. Also, Rick Steiner used to look like this…
UWF/WWE
You mean Rick Steiner wasn’t born wearing wrestling headgear and a neon singlet?
Rick got into the wrestling biz several years before Scott, and formed his first full-time tag team with Sting while they were in Louisiana together. The two even won the UWF Tag Team Championships. Eventually though, the team would split and Rick was left to find a new pumped up blonde partner to replace his old one. Hmmm.
4) He owns the name “Sting” but kindly lets that other Sting use it. No discussion of Sting is complete without a mention of that other Sting. You know, the “Every Little Thing She Does…” guy. So, who’s the real Sting? You’d assume since the adult contemporary Sting came first and is the guy most non-wrestling nerds know about, he’s the one that owns he name, but nope, according to the US Patent Office, Steve Borden owns the rights to the name Sting. The longstanding rumor is that wrestling Sting lets music Sting use the name for a very reasonable fee of one dollar per year. I’m not sure if that dollar bit is true, but Sting certainly has had a chance to bring it up with other Sting, because the two have met and somehow the world didn’t blow up as a result…
WCW Magazine/WWE
“Hey, wanna listen to me play ‘Stairway to Heaven’? I own your name.”
5) Robocop is the only man who hasn’t betrayed Sting. The longstanding gag is that Sting is the world’s biggest sucker and everyone he teams with will end up turning on him, although honestly, it barely counts as a joke, because it’s pretty much 100% true. From Ric Flair, to Bret Hart, to Lex Luger (about half a dozen times) to literally all of WCW, a truly remarkable number of people have turned on our man Sting. Sometimes it seems like the only man who never betrayed or abandoned Sting was Robocop.
Wait, Robocop? Yup, Sting once teamed up with Robocop, and not just the guy who played Robocop or something lame. No, it was 1990 and Sting was nursing an injured knee, but WCW wanted to keep him fresh in fans’ minds, so naturally they decided the best way to keep him on TV was to team him up with an imaginary robot man. At that classic WCW PPV Capital Combat: The Return of Robocop, Sting found himself trapped in a steel birdcage by The Four Horsemen, when who should show up but the guy in the show’s title! Robocop sprung into action, making his way toward the cage with all the urgency of a guy enjoying a soft ice-cream down on the boardwalk and saved the Sting and his pink spaghetti strap tank top from, uh, boredom? I’m not sure what The Horsemen were actually planning to do with that cage.
Anyways, this is where things got tense. As the Four Horsemen scampered away, Sting awkwardly patted Robocop on the shoulder, and anybody with any knowledge of Sting’s career had to be expecting Robocop to pull an ED-209…
… but thankfully he didn’t, immediately establishing Sting’s partnership with Robocop as one of the most successful of his career. Just a theory, but I’m guessing Robocop got of load of Sting’s haircut and early-90s promo skills and pegged him as a friendly fellow cyborg.