Awesome / Sting

Yes, that is a 62-year old wrestling legend diving off a balcony to splash an opponent through 4 stacked tables.

• Sting’s promo on the September 16, 1996 episode of WCW Monday Nitro is epic on so many levels. Words can’t do it justice, just watch it. But not only was it awesome in the moment, but it also served as the final time the iconic “surfer” Sting is seen on television. The next time he returned to TV, Sting becomes the (arguably) even more iconic “crow” Sting.
• Sting FINALLY getting his hands on "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan at Starrcade 1997, winning the WCW World Heavyweight Championship from him with help from Bret Hart. While it's admittedly divisive though,^note as it had a screwy finish in an attempt to capitalize on the heat from the Montreal Screwjob a month before. James J Dillon stripped Sting of the title on the first WCW Thunder, thus squandering a year-plus long storyline of Sting chasing Hogan and beating the nWo, the build up was awesome anyway. Plus, it did lead to Sting speaking for the first time since adopting the Crow gimmick:
  Sting: (points bat at Dillon) You've got no guts! (turns it to Hogan) And you... you're a dead man.
• His matches with Vader at WCW The Great American Bash 92 and WCW SuperBrawl III.
• The War Games between Sting's Squadron (Sting/Ricky Steamboat/Dustin Rhodes/Barry Windham/Nikita Koloff) and the Dangerous Alliance (Rick Rude/"Stunning" Steve Austin/Bobby Eaton/Arn Anderson/Larry Zbyszko) from WCW WrestleWar 92. A fantastic match all around, possibly the best WCW match ever, and a crowning moment for everyone involved.
• Even though it was basically a squash, at WrestleWar 89 he defeated The Iron Sheik by submission, something very few wrestlers have ever done.
• Both Awesome and Heartwarming, but Mick Foley recounted in his book Have A Nice Day how he had a done a tag-team match against Sting and Sting’s tag-team partner, Rick Steiner, got careless with Mick and dropped him on his head during a spot. Backstage after the match, Mick witnessed Sting yelling at Rick for not being careful with Mick, emphasizing to Rick how hard Mick was working to put Sting over.
• Sting's announcement trailer for the WWE 2K15 video game deserves a mention here. Fans understandably booed the aftermath of the trailer (they reasonably presumed the video was Sting's debut trailer, not a video game pitch), but the actual video itself received a rousing response initially, and with good reason. It's well-shot and crafted, and makes the Stinger look like more than a wrestler; he damn near looks like a crime fighting superhero going through his pre-head-busting nightly ritual. Given his eventual WWE designation as "the vigilante," the video more than fits.
• After years of speculation and anticipation, Sting finally appeared in a WWE ring for the first time at the conclusion of Survivor Series 2014, knocking out crooked referee Scott Armstrong and delivering a Scorpion Death Drop to Triple H, thus allowing Team Cena (by way of sole survivor Dolph Ziggler) to win the match and defeat the Authority.
  • And after Seth Rollins got The Authority rehired and Cena's teammates fired via Xanatos Gambit, Sting finally came to Raw to help Cena win a Handicap Match to get said teammates rehired.
• On the February 9, 2015 edition of Raw, Triple H called out Sting, saying that he wanted to face Sting at Fast Lane. When Trips was done, the lights turned off, and after teasing the audience a little (including a fake Sting to scare Trips!), he sent out one sentence; "Triple H, I accept." Cue the entire arena going berserk.
• The March 16, 2015 edition of RAW saw him teaming up with Randy Orton to beat down the Authority. Baseball Bat attacks followed by a Stinger Splash to J&J then a Scorpion Death Drop to Jamie Noble. He also appeared much leaner, his hair had grown out slightly and his thinning hairline was almost unnoticeable. He then cut his first official WWE promo after RAW went off the air on the WWE Network^note See The Other Darrin on the Trivia page.
• On the RAW before WrestleMania 31, Sting cut a promo against Triple H. When Stephanie McMahon interrupted, Sting called her out on her shit, calling her a "spoiled little brat" that got everything handed to her. That's not the awesome part. The awesome part was when he caught Stephanie's attempted bitch slap. The horror on her face sold it perfectly.
• Ignoring the outcome, just seeing Sting at WrestleMania was one for a lot of older fans. It was an image that belonged solely in the realms of fantasy booking and missed opportunities, and yet at WrestleMania 31 it finally happened.
• Sting's return on 8/24/15, interrupting Seth Rollins' honor (by hiding in his statue case) and beating the holy dog shit out of him. The best part, Sting vs. Rollins at Night of Champions! For the fucking WWE World Heavyweight title!
• Sting destroying Rollins' statue on the 9/7/15 episode of RAW by pushing it into a garbage truck, which was then compacted. Cue Seth throwing a temper tantrum.
• Sting wrestling on the 9/14/15 edition of RAW, his first non-PPV match since he left TNA. Nothing spectacular ^note He wrestled Big Show and Rollins in a tag match with Cena, and it was an obvious ratings grab (Football season had started that day), but it was awesome to see simply because Sting has been working a part-time schedule and few expected him to ever wrestle on RAW.
• Victory Road 2011. While the situation in itself was stupid, you got to admire Sting for being so professional and not taking the chance to beat the utter crap out of Jeff Hardy for arriving to a PPV he was main eventing absolutely stoned. Instead, he just gave him a few stiff shots before forcibly pinning him to the canvas so he couldn't injure anyone. He then made it abundantly clear how he felt about the entire affair on his way up the ramp:
  Fans: THAT WAS BULLSHIT!
  Sting: (directly into the camera) I AGREE! I AGREE!
• Sting is being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2016.
• After his WWE run was considered a damp squib with a Downer Ending (unbelievably losing his match against Triple H at WM31 and forced into retirement after an injury received in a match against Seth Rollins), Sting was believed to be done in the wrestling business, an unworthy ending to the career of one of the all-time greats. But in 2020, on the "Winter Is Coming" special episode of AEW Dynamite, airing on his former home of TNT, Sting appeared to save Cody Rhodes, Darby Allin, Dustin Rhodes and even his old nemesis Arn Anderson from a beatdown at the hands of Team Tazz, and everyone came unglued!
  Tony Schiavone: It's STIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!!!
  • As the heels bailed from the ring and ran for it the instant Sting drew his iconic baseball bat like a knight unsheathing his sword, Sting entered the ring and checked on the four men left in it. First he stared eye-to-eye with Arn, who stood his ground but was clearly daunted by his memories of the rivalry between the Icon and The Four Horsemen. Then he walked over to Dustin as he lay in the corner and stared coldly down at him, causing the older Rhodes brother (who'd also worked in WCW but had never crossed Sting's path before) to shrink back before Sting dismissed him and turned away. He kneeled down beside Cody, who'd always said that Sting had been his favourite wrestler while he was growing up, and stared at him, tapping his bat on the canvas, before rising and turning his back on him. And finally he approached the youngest man in the ring- the face-painted TNT Champion Darby Allin, a young man who'd been compared to Sting himself, and who unsteadily pulled himself up to his full height to stare Sting in the eyes, even as the larger man towered over him. Sting took an extra long time examining Darby's face from all angles as if assessing him, before finally backing away, doing his signature scream in the middle of the ring, then turning and leaving.
  • Shortly afterwards, it came out that Sting had, in fact, signed a multi-year deal with AEW, with Sting announcing that he'd undergone the same back surgery that had allowed Edge to make his own shocking return to the ring earlier in the same year and could potentially compete again. But whether he actually wrestles again, or merely provides support as a mentor figure or manager akin to Arn or Jake Roberts, either way the Icon has one more chance to conclude his decades-long career in a manner worthy of his legendary status.
• The February 17 2021 edition of AEW Dynamite. After many weeks of Sting largely staying in the background as the much younger Darby Allin did the brunt of the work in their feud with Team Taz, he finally decided to confront the faction alone. After a brief bit of very safe brawling, Brian Cage managed to get the upper hand and gave him a powerbomb on live TV. After much of the conversation up to that point had revolved around how capable a 61-year old Sting could be in the ring as well as concerns for his physical health, that moment certainly shocked just about everybody watching and injected life into a feud many had felt was growing repetitive.
  • Next week, Sting repaid the favour, apparently coming out alone to confront Team Taz, only to point out Darby Allin in the rafters who ziplined down the ring like Shawn Michaels, skateboard in hand to help Sting lay waste to the heels. Sting beat the crap out of Cage to pay him back for the powerbomb, hitting him with a Stinger Splash and a Scorpion Death Drop that looked excellent and showed that not only could the Icon still take moves, he could dish them out too!
• The Street Fight at Revolution lived up to the hype, letting Sting look once again like the terrifying badass who stalked WCW in the 90s. A fantastically-directed cinematic match, Sting and Darby slugged it out with Team Taz all throughout the abandoned warehouse they met in, with Sting finishing Ricky Starks with a Scorpion Death Drop (after Darby had taken out both Cage and himself with a kamikaze ballistic elbow drop) to win his first match since coming out of retirement and finally end the feud.
• The Street Fight may have looked good and been very entertaining, but it was ultimately still a cinematic match, and didn't really answer the question of whether The Icon could still really go in an actual live wrestling match. When Double or Nothing rolled around, Sting teamed with Darby again against the team of Ethan Page and Scorpio Sky and finally provided an answer: you're damn right he can! While Darby unsurprisingly still did most of the heavy lifting in the match, setting Sting up for dramatic hot tags, Sting went with a ferocity that belied his 62 years of age, including a flying crossbody off the stage onto the opponents before the match began and a series of fantastic Stinger Splashes, before catching Scorpio Sky's attempted cutter and reversing it into the Scorpion Death Drop to win a fantastically satisfying match that silenced all doubters and added to The Icon's already legendary legacy.
• August 18, 2021 episode of AEW Dynamite. Sting and Darby Allin vs. 2.0. The finish? Sting wins the match for his team via double Scorpion Deathdrop into a double Scorpion Deathlock.
• His participation in the Revolution 2022 trios tornado tag match between himself, Darby and Sammy Guevara against the Andrade/Hardy Family Office, most especially the spot where he hurled himself off a balcony to splash Andrade through a tower of 4 stacked tables set up earlier by the Butcher and the Blade. And while Andrade was left dead to the world for the rest of the match, Sting was back up on his feet again only a few seconds later! Let us remind you, he's doing this at the age of 62!
• Sting, Shingo Takagi and Darby Allin taking on the Bullet Club (The Young Bucks and El Phantasmo) at Forbidden Door made Sting seem like he hasn't aged at all since Nitro. Just as the Club appeared at the entrance, the lights turned off and Sting (who hadn't come out during his own entrance earlier) was spotlighted up in the arena rafters, just like the good old days. The light flickered again, and Sting was now at the top of the entrance diving onto the Club to take them down. He also shrugged off a Superkick Party from the Bucks with sheer Heroic Willpower, only staggering and collapsing after leveling them with a double clothesline. After managing to down him the second time with a triple superkick including El Phantasmo, The Young Bucks were about to finish him off with a BTE trigger, but Sting dodged at the last instant, causing their knees to collide, and took down both men with a double Scorpion Death Drop. El Phantasmo was oblivious to what had happened and when he turned around he was shocked to see Sting still standing, leaving him at a loss for words before Sting twisted his nipples (returning the favor for what Phantasmo had done to him earlier, albeit to no effect) and kicked him in the crotch while the ref was distracted.
• Winning the AEW Tag Team Championships together with Darby on the 7th of February episode of Dynamite in a hard-hitting tornado tag match against Ricky Starks and Big Bill, holding wrestling gold again at the age of nearly 65 years and still genuinely looking good doing it. After Darby took Bill (and himself) out of the match with a meteora through a table on the outside, Sting kicked out of a Ricky's Spear before catching a second one and reversing it into the Scorpion Death Drop for the win, causing the crowd to go mental.
• Sting's final match at AEW Revolution 2024 with the Young Bucks was the perfect cap to a 35-year career, and may quite possibly be one of the greatest retirement matches of all time. Before the match even started, Sting came to the ring to his old "Seek and Destroy" theme with his sons dressed as Surfer Sting and Wolfpack Sting… and then the match started. Darby's own spots were spectacular enough – including a swanton bomb from the top of a ladder into a pane of (tempered) glass – but the Stinger was no slouch, dealing out stinger splashes and taking bumps like a man twenty years his junior with aplomb (including a powerbomb off the same ladder, and being thrown into another pane of (sugar) glass). By the end of the match, Sting no-sold the Young Bucks' double super-kick (complete with both Jacksons telling Sting that they weren't sorry and they hated him), leading to him hulking up and delivering scorpion death drops to both men, before Darby's coffin drop allowed Sting to lock in the deathlock and retire, as champion, with an AEW record of 29–0.