Wrestling thread

[Fitz]

Warlord Wrote:

Fitz Wrote:Nice list Warlord. I've pretty much mainly just watched wrestling events from the late 80's to mid 90's and then late 90's and early 00's, watched more WCW.
Though I was never familiar with Sting in his younger years and have always heard good things about him, but to be honest. I've never liked him one bit. I always thought he was overrated and from what I have seen from the more recent versions, he also isn't very original and seems to rip off persona's and characters from others.
Was he much different in his earlier days? I just always used to hear so much about him, though I personally never liked him or found him very entertaining in the ring or on the mic.

Sting's long-going feud with Vader was one of the best ever. Those two cats had some BRUTAL matches. Vader's finisher was the power bomb, and he used to plant dudes HARD. I remember when Vader broke Joe Thurman's back for real with one of his power bombs. It paralyzed the guy and put him out of the business for good. He also broke Virgil's elbow with a power bomb as well.

Sting got a few ribs broken off Vader's power bombs too. I was convinced, and am still, that Vader really and truly liked to hurt guys. He put Mick Foley on the shelf for a few months after nailing him with a power bomb outside the ring, back when Foley was still Cactus Jack. I think that's when Mick said he started having blackouts, and sometimes couldn't even remember where he lived when he was driving home.

As for Sting, when he was young and in his prime, and in his full-blown surfer persona, he was the complete package. He was a great technical wrestler, he could do a lot of the high flying stuff that specialists like Brian Pillman were famous for, and though he wasn't the best mic artist around (that was Flair), he had more natural charisma than anyone else in the sport ever has.

Bret Hart, in fact, was a near clone of Sting. He started his career wearing face-paint, and his finisher (the Sharp-shooter) was ripped straight off Sting's finisher, the Scorpion Deathlock.

Sting's crow shtick came later in his career, and is probably the impetus for your statement of him being unoriginal. But even then, Sting was still doing things no one had done before. Him dropping down out of the rafters had never been done before, as far as I know, though many wrestlers have done that since.

I don't know though, I guess everyone has their favorites. But I certainly can't imagine anyone who grew up watching Sting, in his prime, ranking him any lower than 3rd on an all-time greats list. I loved heels and hated faces growing up, but even I couldn't help but root for Sting. The guy was just badass.

Thanks for that. I never grew up with a prime Sting, so that probably plays a big factor. I mainly remember him in late WCW when he ripped off the Crow. At the time, I didn't mind him and his feud with the nWo and him hanging in the rafters. But when he first appeared, it was like every single week on Nitro where he didn't wrestle or anything, all you used to see was him in the rafters towards the end of the show, and every now and again he would come down. It felt like this went on for months, all you would see is him in the rafters and that's it.
He barely even wrestled in that time frame, and it looked like he didn't even do any work, as I felt he always had a very generic body for a wrestler as well, kind of soft looking with not much defentition and I used to wonder what the fuck he does if he doesn't wrestle, or looks like he trained either, lol.
Then on TNA I have seen his new rip off and it's a direct ripoff of Heath Ledger's the joker.

I wouldn't mind watching some of his earlier stuff. As a kid, I didn't have access to other videos other than WWF, so I never grew up with him. Though I had a Sting figure when he had that bleach blonde surfer look you mentioned and I always associated that Sting as the prime one, though unfortunately I never really saw that one.

Funny you mentioned Bret Hart, as he is probably my favourite wrestler of all time, haha.