Breakup Breakout: Sting and Warrior both went on to become megastars, Sting would emerge as the breakout star of the Blade Runners as he enjoyed a much longer career and a better reputation among fans and fellow wrestlers.
Creator Backlash: Sting would admit later on that he felt absolutely embarrassed doing the program with Robocop at Capitol Combat '90, to the point of almost wanting to leave WCW over it. He ended up having a lot of fun with it when it eventually finished however, and even joked that he'd rather do that again compared to some of the worse material he dealt with later on in his career.
Sting wasn't happy with having to wrestle an intoxicated Jeff Hardy at the main event of Victory Road 2011, as his infamous "I AGREE!" immediately afterwards makes it clear.
Sting wasn't happy to be paired with Vampiro at all, but still tried his best to carry the feud.
In a shoot, he said he saw how the WCW guys were treated at WWF, and decided not to have anything to do with that. He specifically mentioned The Rock saying to Booker T, "Who the hell are you?" (despite Booker being WCW Champion at the time) and felt Booker deserved better than that.
His decision to leave his WWE Legends contract and go to AEW was primarily because he wanted to continue being an in-ring character since WWE had no intention of using him.
Distanced from Current Events: Sting ceased performing his signature stunt of rappelling from the rafters in the months following the death of Owen Hart, only resuming after Bret Hart assured him that he and his family didn't have a problem with it.
Dye Hard: Steve Borden is brown-haired, but spent his first ten years wrestling as a blond.
Enforced Method Acting: For Victory Road 2011, Sting looked absolutely pissed off and managed to destroy Jeff Hardy in less than two minutes. Why? Jeff was so drugged out of his mind, he couldn't actually wrestle. Sting's barely contained rage was completely legit; when he was walking back up the ramp, a fan can be heard shouting, "THAT WAS BULLSHIT!" after the finish. Sting turns to the off-camera fan, and in plain view of the TNA cameras, spits back, "I agree!"
Flip-Flop of God: For years Sting has insisted that he was never going to be the third man in the nWo, whether Hogan joined or not. Finally, at a taping of the WWE Network's Table For Three with DDP and Vader he gave in and said that he was tired of fighting it: He doesn't remember any plans for him to be the third man, but he's heard it enough that it must be true.
Hostility on the Set: At his retirement media scrum, Sting was asked about his partnership with Ultimate Warrior. Sting noted it was good they went their separate ways because they would have “literally” killed each other. He also made a reference to Warrior’s abuse of steroids.
Magnum Opus Dissonance: Sting has considered his short-lived "Joker Sting" gimmick in Impact Wrestling to be his favourite gimmick, as it allowed him to be himself more. Fans still prefer his Crow or Surfer looks on
Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": Not the man himself, but his finisher. Many WWE fans who are unfamiliar with WCW accuse Sting of stealing the Scorpion Deathlock (aka the Sharpshooter) from Bret Hart. Although Bret started wrestling first, Sting was actually the first North American wrestler to use the move; Hart was primarily a tag team wrestler during his first 10 years in the ring. Even Bret acknowledged in his book that Sting did it before him (though pointed out some slight variances in the two moves). And as stated in the main article, neither Sting nor Hart invented the move.note It was invented by Japanese wrestling legend Riki Choshu.
Money, Dear Boy: Sting had never seen a professional wrestling match in his life during his youth because wrestling was not broadcast in his area and only knew who Hulk Hogan was because he would work out in his gym (and through his role in Rocky III years later). When offered to become a wrestler, Borden only accepted due to the money. Needless to say, he eventually developed a genuine love for the business. With that in mind, Sting's talents don't come cheaply and the reason he left TNA and finally joined WWE at least ten years too late was because TNA was in a financial shithole and could no longer afford to pay him, along with much other of its other top talent.
Never Work with Children or Animals: At the Great American Bash '99, Sting is attacked by Tank Abbott, Scott Steiner and a bunch of dogs, as filmed by your local backyard wrestling club. Steiner teleports 15 feet, Sting's paint goes from messy to clean to messy, there are 12 cameras apparently, and 3 dogs who look agitated at Sting's knee pad and the rag he's holding. Then one dog starts sniffing the other dog's butt as he gnaws on Sting's rag.
In late 1995, Sting stopped bleaching his hair blond and let it grow longer, as he felt that his blond flat top was outdated. This led to him eventually taking on the Crow gimmick.
According to the man himself, one of the reasons why he never brought back the Surfer Sting persona is because he doesn't have enough hair left to grow his old flat top back.
According to his Players' Tribune article, before Steve Borden even knew what pro wrestling was he'd gone for a few auditions around Hollywood and had gotten down to the final two for "a goofy part in this little movie", but he ended up missing out on the role. That role turned out to be Ogre in Revenge of the Nerds.
Sting was approached to wrestle the Undertaker at WrestleMania XXVII, but turned it down for the same reason he's never worked for WWE: because he mistrusted (rightfully) McMahon's treatment of former WCW talent. Despite the age of both competitors, it could've been a dream match between two of the industry's biggest stars. Instead, he went on to feud with TNA's merch machine... Jeff Hardy! Sting re-signed with TNA twice after that match. And was rewarded with the Joker Sting gimmick. Let that sink into your "He could have wrestled Undertaker" file.
The WWE apparently thought they were close enough that they began building the feud with the infamous "2.21.11" promos. If you watch them originally, The Undertaker is clearly visible inside the house, and then a figure in black boots and a trench coat walks up. The idea was to suggest Sting was, "Entering The Undertaker's yard." (One of Taker's Catch Phrases was about people coming into his yard and paying for it.) Furthermore, WWE had paid for the rights to a Metallica song for that year's Wrestlemania. But negotiations fell through as detailed above, WWE changed 2.11.11 to be hyping Taker's return and he fought Triple H at Wrestlemania that year instead. Triple H came out to "For Whom The Bell Tolls" (presumably since WWE had paid Metallica already) and had his two matches with Taker.
Even earlier than that, Sting had almost signed with the WWE in 2003 to debut at Wrestlemania XIX to begin a feud with either "Stone Cold" Steve Austin or The Rock. He was also approached to wrestle Kurt Angle at WrestleMania 18. Though the two did wrestle each other several times when they were in TNA together.
If Hogan had refused to be the third man in the nWo, Sting was the second choice.note Steve himself has no recollection of this despite the likes of Bischoff, Nash, Hall and Tony Schiavone saying otherwise, meaning he either wasn't told about it or simply forgot about it over time. Since he can't play a convincing heel (as proven later), it likely wouldn't have worked.
Originally Sting had only intended to do cinematic matches during his AEW run because of his advanced age. His young protégé and tag partner Darby Allin convinced him to also do some live matches after training with him, starting with their tag match against Ethan Page and Scorpio Sky at Double or Nothing 2021.
Actor Allusion: In his video for Love Is the Seventh Wave, he plays a schoolteacher. In real life, he taught at St Paul's First School in Cramlington for two years.
Bad Export for You: The US CD releases of Ten Summoner's Tales and Mercury Falling inexplicably remove "Everybody Laughed but You" and "Twenty Five to Midnight", respectively, from the tracklists. The former album's alteration was also present on the LP release in all territories due to space constraints, but why American CDs of both albums dropped one track each has never been clarified.
Based on a Dream: Several of his songs. The title of his first solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, came from a dream in which blue turtles were digging up his garden.
Creator Breakdown: Much of the somber tone of ...Nothing Like the Sun was influenced by the passing of Sting's mother from cancer in late 1986, and The Soul Cages was created as a way for Sting to cope with the sudden death of his father, also from cancer, shortly after the release of the prior album. His father's death in particular caused a nearly four-year bout of writer's block, ended only when Sting realized that he could use music as a means of coping with his loss.
Descended Creator: When ticket sales for The Last Ship started flagging, Sting stepped into the lead role himself. It helped some, but the show still closed after a fairly short run.
Executive Meddling: Four of the five songs that he composed for Kingdom of the Sun were cut in the late stages of production, after it had been drastically overhauled into The Emperor's New Groove, forcing him to stay on longer than the time he had allotted to write a personal theme song for the character of Kuzco. The man himself managed to do a little of meddling right back by getting the ending of the film changednote Originally, Kuzco still built his massive personal water park, but instead of destroying Pacha's house to make way for it, he would build it on the hill right next to it. Sting said that the "joke" ending would indicate that Kuzco didn't learn anything from his experience, not to mention the whole thing went against his person feelings as an environmentalist, and the writers changed it to him building a little summer shack there instead. to better reflect its intended moral. The one other song of his that remained, "My Funny Friend and Me," ended up getting an Oscar nomination.
He Also Did: The iconic "I want my MTV" singing on Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing"? That was an ad-lib by Sting who was visiting the band's recording studio one night and loved the work-in-progress version of the track that they played for him, so much so that Mark Knopfler let him sing background vocals on it (which also explains why the ad-lib sound so much like "Don't Stand So Close To Me").
Named Like My Name: Sting asked to meet the wrestler Sting in the early '90s; When they met after one of his concerts, the musician told the wrestler that he found out that his young son had a poster of the wrestler on his wall, and he wanted to find out who this other Sting is. They even took a photo together. The wrestler also owns the rights to the name Sting, and it's rumored that he licenses it out to the musician for $1 a year.
Pop-Culture Urban Legends: For around 20 years, a popular rumor claimed that Sting could have sex for five hours straight due to his practice of Tantra. His wife, Trudie Styler, eventually publicly debunked it, claiming it was an exaggeration that came out of something he had said to a friend while both of them were drinking.
Real-Life Relative: Actress wife Trudie Styler has appeared in some of his videos, and also worked with him in Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and The Grotesque. His son Joe often sings backup for him on tour (when not with his own band Fiction Plane).
Jim Henson originally wanted Sting to play the villain in Labyrinth, but ultimately heeded the advice of his sons, who preferred David Bowie. YMMV on whether Sting would now have websites devoted to his "area".
Originally, he was supposed to play the lead in the Luc Besson film Subway, but due to commitments to his solo career and Dune (1984), he backed out of the project, and eventually the role went to Christopher Lambert.
He was considered for the role of the wicked Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. "The Lazarus Heart" was also originally penned as the musical finale for the film, in an ending in which Roger is shot to death after being caught in the crossfire during the final duel (doubling with the fact that it was written partly as a tribute to Sting's recently-deceased mother). After the film's script was changed to give it a much more optimistic ending in which Roger survives, Sting repurposed the song for the opening track of ...Nothing Like the Sun, which ended up being released a year before the film.
Then one dog starts sniffing the other dog's butt as he gnaws on Sting's rag.