This professional wrestler, born Steve Borden, is simply better known by his wrestling name of Sting. His costume is a one piece black bodysuit adorned with a white scorpion and his signature move is the Scorpion Death Lock and the Scorpion Death Drop. His face paint, black and white, is inspired by the film The Crow
Birth name: Steve Borden
DOB: 3/20/1959
Where: Omaha, Nebraska
Trivia
-He has held the WCW World Title at least 10x in addition to multiple other title
-Out of all the wrestlers in the WCW, he was the only one to stay from the late 1980s. But he did have reconstructive knee surgery in 1991
-He is one of the few wrestlers for WCW who didn't leave this company to go to WWE until 2014. He worked for WCW from 1988-2001 when it was bought out by WWE
His last official wrestling match was in 2015 against Seth Rollins
-He made his debut as part of a tag team called "The Blade Runners" with his tag team partner "Rock", not to be confused with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
-He gained fame overnight by participating in a one hour time limit draw with Ric Flair at the first "Clash of Champions" on 3/27/1988
-Former wrestler Red Rolland Bastien is his trainer
-He has three kids named Garrett, Steven and Gracie
-He appeared in all 10 of the World Championship Wrestling video games
-His "Blade Runners" tag team partner was Jim Hellwig, who would later go on to be known as the "Ultimate Warrior"
-He is fluent in Spanish
-His signature move, the Scorpion Death Lock, is exactly the same as Bret Hart's signature move the Sharpshooter
-He wrestled in the first and last episodes of WCW Monday Nitro against Ric Flair
-In 1998, he became a born-again Christian. One of his brothers, Jeff Borden, is a pastor at "Church on the Rock"
-He officially announced his retirement from wrestling on 4/2/2016
Filmography
-He's mostly known for wrestling on TV, but he has appeared on TV and in a few movies
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Revelation Road: The Beginning of the End. Character: Junkyard |
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Thunder in Paradise. Character: Adam "Hammerhead" McCall |
10 Things You May Not Know About Sting | Cultaholic
From humble beginnings
-In the early days, he was still going with his natural blonde hair and was often known as a "surfer" because of that. He earned notoriety overnight due to his initial match with Ric "Nature Boy" Flair at the March 1988 Clash of Champions. Shockingly to almost everyone, he was not a fan of wrestling growing up. The reason is because he never had access to a TV and his trainer, Rick Bassman, tried to get him interested, but it took a long time and many tries. From there, what got him into wrestling was seeing a match between Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant in LA
Things are moving now
-He took the nickname "Sting" in 1986, when he was part of a tag team with Jim Hellwig, who would later go on to be the "Ultimate Warrior", called "The Blade Runners". He simply took the name Sting because it sounded better than some of the names he used in the past, like "Flash". He and his tag team partner had formed a tag team known as Power Team USA and then The Freedom Fighters before settling on The Blade Runners
Big Name Battles
-Like all wrestlers, Sting had to wrestle some interesting people. From big name people destined for fame to people who dropped off the face of the earth, Sting wrestled some interesting people. These matches were interesting and exciting enough to make you wish there was video footage somewhere. Sting is the only wrestler to have wrestled The Undertaker and Kane. 1990 saw Mark Calaway, when he was still working for WCW as "Mean Mark Callous". He would eventually don a leather long-rider coat and wide brimmed hat and remodel himself as The Undertaker when he went to work for WWE. 1993 seen Sting wrestle and defeat 23 year old Glenn Jacobs for a taping of WCW Saturday Night. This was before Glenn was known as Kane; he was still working under the name Bruiser Martino
Helping Hands
-The mid-90s seen WCW getting bigger and more successful. Sting is not the kind of man to seek fame for selfish reasons. But he did manage to have at least one shocking moment in the Monday Night Wars, acting as a go-between. Sting let WCW CEO Eric Bischoff know that Lex Luger had been working with WWE without a contract. Bischoff was, not shockingly, angry at this. Sting offered to be the peacemaker and talk to Lex. At Sting's home, in his garage, Luger, Sting, Bischoff had a small meeting. It was in this meeting that Bischoff offered Luger what some might call a lowball contract, while also imposing the rule of Luger giving Vince McMahon notice. Luger agreed and it made for entertaining TV; Lex Luger returning to Nitro after a secret meeting at Sting's home
Angels and Demons
-As 1996 came to a close, Sting adopted a new look. Instead of the blonde hair he was born with, he went completely dark and started to adopt a new black and white look. The high energy Sting people knew before was destroyed and replaced by a black void of no emotion decked in black and white. This silent version of Sting was referred to as "Crow Sting" because of the striking similarities to the resurrected Eric Draven from the film and comic book The Crow. Sting gives Scott Hall, aka "Razor Ramon" the credit as he suggested the idea. But in the 2018 book Nitro, Scott Hall wasn't the one who gave Sting this idea. It was actually artist/special effects expert Andre Freitas who gave Sting the idea for the "go Goth" look. Sting personally went to Freitas' studio, where the artist showed him the concept running through his mind. He showed Sting not just imagery from The Crow, but also singer Marilyn Manson and the bodysuit worn by Kyle McLachlan from the film Dune. Once Sting saw these images and the concept together as a whole, Freitas said he was hooked
Off to Europe
-Since there is a WWE World Cup, there's also the WWE European Cup. WWE held a couple of European wrestling matches, one in March 1994 and another in November 2000. Not shockingly, Sting won both. The 1994 European Cup was a 16-man match that hosted a variety of different wrestlers and Sting defeated Stevie Ray, Ron Simmons, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and Vader on his way to the win. Six and a half years later, Sting won a competition involving four wrestlers Mike Awesome, Kevin Nash and Alex Wright. He received an automatic bye into the finals by winning over Kevin Nash, who had defeated Alex Wright and Mike Awesome
Grade A Revenge
-Sting didn't wrestle a single match for 15+ months. He also didn't show his thoughts or motivations. He simply busied himself with studying WCW and was looking for the right time for a little payback. He certainly seemed keen on a little payback to the New World Order. His payback would come in the form of Starrcade 1997. He challenged "Hollywood" Hogan for the World title in what would turn out to be a severely one side match with Sting winning the gold. The match did pretty good and had a large audience. According to those keeping an eye on the number of pay-per-views for this, Starrcade 1997 had 700,000 pay-per-views. It completely destroyed the Halloween Havoc's record of 405,000 pay-per-views. At the time, WWE had only slightly beaten this record with 1989's WrestleMania 5, who had 767,000 views. The main thing is people wanted Sting to knock the egotistical Hogan off his pedestal and were willing to shell out money for it.
Get ready to go digital
-WCW and WWE have released video games over the years featuring their respective wrestlers. There have been some that have been really good, like WCW/nWo Revenge and WCW vs. nWo: World Tour. Sting had made an appearance in all of them. WCW released 10 games from 1990-2000 and Sting is the ONLY wrestler to have appeared in all 10. Whether it's red and black Wolfpack clothes on NES' WCW Wrestling, swinging a cattle prod on the Mayhem release, there's no doubt Sting had been the one constant in all of the games.
In the Name of Fame
-2012 saw the opening of the Hall of Fame for TNA. It seemed odd, given that this wrestling company had only been around for 10 years. Sting was the first inductee into these halls, a sign ofSign out respect showing him that he had done something right. He added a sense of legitimacy to his career to this young company in the mid-2000s. It will be marked down in history that Sting was the first man to be inducted into both the TNA and WWE Halls of Fame, during his 2016 induction into the WWE Hall of Fame. Since then, only four other people have gotten this same kind of honor-Jeff Jarrett, Kurt Angle, The Dudley Boyz. They may have been good wrestlers, but none of them possessed the same kind of charisma Sting did, like when he used a demonic bird to hold back Eric Bischoff
Leader of the Pack
-From his time-limit match with Ric Flair to his long career with TNA, Sting seems to have done it all. He's often relied on to be the face of places he's wrestled in. All the wrestling companies he's been a part of - WCW, TNA and others - understood that Steve Borden would be rewarded through a strong number of World Title championship belts that almost rivals Ric Flair's number of 16. Sting's total seems to be 15. While with WCW, he holds a number of 9 (six World Titles, one NWA title and two WCW International titles in 1994. While with TNA, he gained five more; four with the Impact Wrestling belt and one with the NWA title while TNA was still using it. Few would argue that Sting didn't deserve them, but most would agree he did. He's the kind of wrestler that people can admire for being honest, not playing dirty or having an ego.
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