Recently there was a swirl of buzz around Sting, the legendary star of WCW and TNA fame, as his contract with WWE expired – forcing some upcoming toys and other WWE merch to be canceled – and Cody Rhodes made some interesting comments about it, leading many fans to speculate that the Stinger might be jumping ship to All Elite Wrestling.
It’s a very real possibility that Sting signs with AEW, but is it a good idea? Should Sting stay retired? There are compelling reasons for both sides, so let’s evaluate each option for an event that might not even happen.
10 Sign with AEW: Coming Full Circle
Sting became a huge star wrestling for World Championship Wrestling in the 1980s all the way to the final episode of TNT’s Monday Nitro in 2001.
AEW is very heavily inspired by WCW – after all, that’s a promotion defined by Cody’s dad, Dusty Rhodes – so it would make perfect sense to bring Sting back to the network where he made his biggest (stinger) splash, making his career come full circle.
9 Stay Retired: Makes AEW Look Like TNA
Ever since WCW spent way too much time elevating Hogan and his buds, modern wrestling has been defined by a reliance on old established talent. WWE does it a lot, but TNA caught a lot of flack for it, pushing older guys over young talent.
And AEW already boasts former TNA talent like Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian, Taz, Matt Hardy, The Butcher (f.k.a. Braxton Sutter), LAX, Allie, Awesome Kong, and a few more. Who’s next, Mike Tenay?
8 Sign with AEW: Veteran Wisdom
AEW is a young promotion, run by young talent who maybe don’t have a lot of experience running a wrestling show. And Sting is someone who’s been through the entirety of WCW in the 1990s and a good chunk of TNA’s worst days.
If AEW signs Sting, seeks his input, and values his opinion, they could further learn from the mistakes of their predecessors from someone who saw it first hand.
7 Stay Retired: Keep AEW Young
AEW’s focus on younger wrestlers and apparent support of rising talent have so far distinguished the promotion from WWE, which has painted itself into a corner over the past decade by relying too much on aging talent from the Attitude Era.
Maybe a star such as Sting doesn’t need to get involved. Maybe he can just enjoy retirement while the kids have their fun and build an audience based on their own merit instead of nostalgia.
6 Sign with AEW: Could Be a Manager
So far, AEW has kept the old guy matches to a minimum, strategically employing pro wrestling legends like Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, and Jake Roberts as coaches and managers of the actual wrestlers.
It stands to reason that Sting will probably get a similar treatment, taking a younger wrestler under his trenchcoat and coaching them to greatness. Not every old guy on wrestling television is embarrassing, and in AEW there’s a likelihood that Sting will be presented with dignity.
5 Stay Retired: Strong Possibility of Wrestling
If there’s one quality that most wrestlers have, it’s an innate ability to refuse to stop wrestling. Look at Terry Funk. Sting singing with AEW greatly increases the possibility of Sting coming out of “retirement” to chase the dragon of “one more match.”
Which could be okay, but it also comes with the potential of not only tarnishing the Stinger’s legacy but also of him sustaining an injury like he did when he took on Seth Rollins in 2015.
4 Sign with AEW: Star Power
The thing about pro wrestling legends is that they still have value, and Sting’s been absent long enough that his presence will give AEW a little boost of star power. Even if he doesn’t necessarily wrestle – or maybe he shows up in a multi-man tag team scenario where he doesn’t have to shoulder the weight of an entire match on his own – he’s still Sting on pro wrestling television.
WWE’s use of legends has been a situation of diminishing returns, but if AEW employs Sting in the right way and doesn’t just rely on a nostalgia pop, his star power and goodwill could do the promotion a lot of favors.
3 Stay Retired: He’s In His Sixties
Aging sucks, and it especially sucks to see your childhood favorites not be what they used to be, but the fact of the matter is that Sting is in his 60s, and debuted as a wrestler nearly 35 years ago.
Being in your early sixties hasn’t stopped some wrestlers from still going at it – again, Terry Funk – but a storied and legendary career like Sting’s doesn’t need a late period act where he potentially struggles in the ring but fans are happy to see him.
2 Sign with AEW: Could Still Be Healthy
In 2015, Sting took a Buckle Bomb from Seth Rollins so poorly that Sting sustained a neck injury that was reported as career-ending. However, there have also been reports that he’s been medically cleared to wrestle and wanted to come out of retirement to take on The Undertaker, so who knows what the truth is.
If he’s healthy enough to wrestle a match – even one more match – it would be a nice feather in AEW’s figurative cap to say that Sting wrestled his last match with their promotion.
1 Stay Retired: He’s Just Going to Get Betrayed (Kayfabe)
Even if he’s perfectly healthy and is capable of taking Pentagon Jr. to the limit in a five-star classic, Sting needs to stay safe, because he’s a naive man who spent much of his adult life trusting the wrong people and getting betrayed.
Cody Rhodes can’t be trusted – he’s got one of the Four Horsemen as his coach and AEW employs another. Lex Luger probably isn’t far behind. Retirement is Sting’s only safe haven.