There’s no such thing as an easy goodbye — especially when you know it’s forever. As Sting stood in the middle of the ring, face paint half-worn off, doing his best to hold back tears, wrestling fans who got to witness the legend’s final match came to the realization that this wasn’t just the close of a performer’s career, but the end of an era.
Wrestlers rarely get the send off they deserve. Tragically it’s a sport too often concluding with an athlete’s downward spiral, rather than going out on top. A sport where good guys rarely finish first — and yet, Sting managed get the perfect retirement, in the perfect place, at the perfect time, surrounded by those who matter to him the most. Flanked by his two adult sons, his tag team partner in Darby Allin, who Sting was tasked with mentoring, and the entire AEW roster standing on the stage applauding him, Sting thanked the fans in Greensboro, North Carolina for supporting a career spanning 39 years.
The true story of Sting isn’t the incredible matches, or the industry-defining moments — but by what was absent in that 39-year career. Nobody, at any point of the wrestler’s time in NWA, WCW, TNA, WWE, or AEW had a single bad thing to say about the man under the paint, Steve Borden.
Sting was the wrestling fan’s wrestler. He never managed to crack the mainstream to the level of other legendary wrestlers of his era. Hulk Hogan, Undertaker, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock — guys whose names are known world over. Not Sting, and this was by design. Every time there was a choice between principle and personal glory, Sting chose the former.
In so many ways Sting came to be a reflection of his most notable run, descending from the rafters to take on the nWo during WCW’s biggest boom period in the late 90s. The stalwart hero, the defender against the odds. Not just against a faction pretending to tear a company apart, but desperately swimming against a tide in wrestling which mandated that to get to the top you had to put ruthlessness over everything else. Where athletes would routinely throw anyone in their way under the bus to climb the ladder, playing backstage politics to curry favor.
Steve Borden didn’t do this. When the choice came down to going to WWE, the company that killed WCW, or walking away — he walked. Fame waiting for him if he wanted it, instead the wrestler decided to take a two year break and join TNA, to write his next wrestling chapter by helping to build up a rival company.
It’s unclear what would have happened if Sting took a different direction. Former WCW stars who joined WWE had mixed results. Booker T managed to weather the storm, but predominantly the stars of WCW were turned into jokes as a final twist of the knife by Vince McMahon over the company he defeated. Perhaps Sting would have prevailed, and become a star on-par with The Rock or Austin, but we’ll never know because he chose his own path.
Did Borden have his demons? Certainly. He was open about his abuse of anabolic steroids and his substance abuse issues in the 1980s, but found peace though his faith and making amends with his family in the late 1990s. The next 20 years were dominated by fixing mistakes, while also approaching the wrestling business his way, the Sting way, and that was with ultimate respect for the art of professional wrestling — even when that meant taking a personal hit because of it.
Nobody knew what we were in for when Sting arrived in AEW for his career-ending run in 2020. Logic tells us that a 60-year-old man shouldn’t be able to perform at a high level, and initially the feeling was that he would be in a mentorship role — and while that certainly happened, Sting also managed to beat back father time with a baseball bat, throwing himself through tables, capturing a crowd, and looking like he’d barely lost a step over 30+ years or wrestling.
A timeless, ageless wonder, Sting redefined what a final run in wrestling could look like. A career that closed with a bang, not a whimper. Not only did Sting manage to get all his flowers over his three-plus year run in AEW, but propelled his protege Darby Allin to new heights, now leaving the company with the 31-year-old Allin in a position to carry his mantle.
“You’ve still got it!” echoed off the walls of the Greensboro Coliseum as Sting thanked AEW for his final run. It wasn’t lip service. It wasn’t a hollow chant. Fans just witnessed a 64-year-old man get suplexed off a stage through a table, thrown through plate glass, hit with a baseball bat — and still managed to tell a story of fighting adversity to win his own way.
I’d like to hope we could see this again. That we might see someone defy the cut throat world of wrestling to win while being a genuinely wonderful person to everyone around them. I’d like to believe it’s possible for the nice guy to finish first. If it does happen it will be because the new generation of wrestlers saw Sting lead by example. Witnessed first hand as he connected with the crowd, got his slice of fame, but never had to compromise his morals to achieve it. Is it the easy way? No, but nothing Steve Borden ever did was about achieving things the easy way. The next generation of wrestling is uncertain, but one thing is chiseled in stone:
There will never, ever be another Sting.
