on July 7, 1990, at the The Great American Bash, Sting won his first world heavyweight championship, after only being with the company for 3 years, and at the age of 30, which is young for a world champion. He had been the most over babyface in WCW for 3 years, and had the loudest pops of any performer, despite not being overly skilled on the mic. Watch his Halloween Havoc promo about Sid from 1990, and youll see him make Bret Hart look like Superstar Graham. Nonetheless, Sting had the right look with similar face paint to his former tag team partner, The Ultimate Warrior, who was roughly the same age, and coincidentally champion of the other biggest wrestling corporation at the same time. His bright neon colors were perfect for the late 80s, early 90s fascination with fluorescent pinks, yellows, and greens. Sting had natural athleticism in the ring, and was a damn good wrestler. Especially before his knee injury in January of 90. Not really a Bret Hart, but still was the common denominator in many of the best matches in WCWs history. Unfortunately for him, he never was the go to guy for long world title reigns. His first reign only lasted six months, and this was after the fans had cheered him like crazy for three years. The PPV numbers werent much worse with Sting defending the championship rather than Flair, so I blame Ole Andersons wacky booking. They had no super heel in mind to challenge Sting, once he became champ. They thought Sid would be a good choice, but didnt want to damage his reputation through a clean loss, because his shelf-life would be less as a monster heel. Enter the stupid black scorpion angle. I honestly think it couldve been a pretty good angle if they had been able to bring in one of the top heels from WWF in a mask, and lose the kiddy theatrics with magic shows, and tigers and stuff. Also the story wasnt well thought out, and never fully realized. Stings ties to the scorpion were never explained. It was like Ole was winging it. Burying his young talent, and pushing geriatrics on the cheap. The A list house shows featured dinosaurs, and drew a couple hundred, while the B list house shows had the youth, and drew double. Ole still continued to bury them, and push the veterans. This booking style was costing the company thousands of dollars. Unfortunately WCW thought that Dusty Rhodes was the answer to fix everything, and they were wrong again. On January 11th, 1991 the Sting experiment was concluded as the booking committee went with the routine back-up plan, of putting the strap back on Flair. The question is, if Sting had won the championship in early 90, when he was originally scheduled to, and not hurt his knee. Would his first title run have been more successful? Or was horrible booking to blame for Stings botched first reign? He went on to many accolades, and remained one of the most popular WCW wrestlers for years to come, but like I said, was never the top option. One has to wonder what couldve been.
Posted on: Sat, 24 May 2014 21:26:09 +0000