On September 20th at WWE Night of Champions, WWE Champion Seth Rollins will defend his World Heavyweight Championship against former WCW World Heavyweight Champ, “The Vigilante” Sting.
Man, that last sentence is really loaded with lots of variations of the word “champ” in it…
Some people love this. People thought Sting would never ever step foot in a WWE ring, and in 2015, he’s getting a shot at the top prize. Others are not as crazy about the idea. While the visual of Sting versus Rollins in a wrestling match may be a surreal one, some are arguing the logic behind the match is lacking, as the first and only time we’ve seen Sting in a WWE contest, it was in a losing effort to Triple H. Going into NOC, some would say Sting has zero momentum and has done nothing to earn the championship opportunity.
What do I think? I’m intrigued. Seth Rollins is being hailed as the next Shawn Michaels. He definitely has all the tools, and he’s definitely going to have to put them to use on September 20th in his most unique title defense yet. I like Sting, and it’s going to be fun to watch!
What?
Oh, you were expecting something different, based on the article title.
The ball was dropped with Sting…
…in WCW.
That’s what we in the writing industry refer to as “click bait.”
Recently, thanks to the WWE Network, I began watching WCW Monday Nitro’s from 1998. Yes, even seventeen years later, I can’t get over how poorly the main event of Starrcade 1997, and the events that followed it, were executed.
The once boisterous and colorful Sting became silent and darker, carried a baseball bat and hung out in the rafters. Fans of World Championship Wrestling questioned his allegiance. Was Sting WCW, or was the black and white clad Stinger a member of the New World Order? Fans watched with bated breath over the course of fourteen months– fourteen months– as Sting began to systematically attack the nWo and proved that he bled WCW, and it culminated with Sting getting a shot at Hollywood Hulk Hogan’s WCW Championship at Starrcade 1997.
Fourteen months of build… can you remember the last angle in wresting that went on for fourteen months that kept fans interest? In the age of three minute YouTube videos and sit second Vines, it’s hard to imagine a storyline captivating a wrestling audience quite like Sting vs. The nWo did.
If you were a fan of wrestling in the late 1990’s, there’s a good chance you ordered Starrcade 1997 live on pay per view, which with a 1.9 buyrate (translating into around 500,000-600,000 total buys in 1997), it went on to become WCW’s largest PPV number of all time. And if you watched it live on pay per view, chances are you couldn’t help but feel like Sting/Hogan ended very anticlimactic.
See, the finish was supposed to be a fast three count by notoriously screwy ref and part time nWo employee Nick Patrick, following a Hulk Hogan leg drop. This was to lead to WCW’s newest acquisition, five time WWF Champion and WCW referee for the evening, Bret “Hitman” Hart coming down to ringside. Not wanting to see another screwjob like the one he experienced just one month prior in Montreal, Hart would knock out Patrick, restart the match, and call for the bell when Sting locked in his Scorpion Death Lock submission.
Almost all of that happened…
…except the most important part…
…the fast count.
When Hulk Hogan hit the leg drop, and Nick Patrick proceeded to count the most unbiased, fair, perfect paced three count in the history of wrestling. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three. After fourteen months of build-up, Hollywood Hulk Hogan had seemingly retained the WCW Championship, fair and square.
For years, there has been a rumor that behind the scenes, Hulk Hogan paid off Nick Patrick. No, not in a pro wrestling storyline. I’m talking like, real money was actually exchanged from Hulk Hogan to Nick Patrick to count a well paced one, two and three on Sting. The reason I remember reading, and for the life of me, I can’t remember whwre I read it, was that Hogan didn’t believe that Sting deserved the championship because of his drug addiction at the time, and because he wasn’t in the shape he should have been for a guy that wrestled zero matches over the course of a year and a half.
In a 2010 interview with Nick Patrick, he claims that he was simply confused, as several different people told him that the finish was supposed to go down different ways.
The night after Starrcade, WCW gave us the Sting/Hogan WCW Championship rematch, free on TV, live on Nitro. Shenanigans ensued, Nitro went off the air, and over the course of two weeks, it’s decided that because of the controversy surrounding the situation, Sting is stripped of the WCW Championship on the inaugural episode of WCW Thunder. Eventually, Sting would beat Hogan at SuperBrawl VIII in February of 1998, but the damage was already done. After waiting months for a hero to reclaim the WCW Championship from the hated nWo, Sting rose to the occasion, yet took the title under less than noble circumstances. Factor in that Sting’s eventual run with Big Gold was lasted barely two months (losing the belt to Macho Man in April, who lost it back to Hogan the very next day) and was forgettable, the whole build up to Starrcade went to waste.
Soon after, Sting decided to paint his face red and joined nWo Wolfpac… which I always found terrible and random. The guy that was the backbone of WCW decides to trust a new incarnation and join..? I didn’t buy into it.
Many people point to the defection of Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn and Dean Malenko was the point where the hole in the WCW ship formed, but I believe that the leak began when WCW dropped the ball on Sting and their biggest money making angle of all time.
Rollins vs Sting– Night of Champions will have my money on Sunday.
-Greg
