Sunday night in Greensboro, North Carolina, Steve “Sting” Borden called it a career as an icon of professional wrestling after 38 years. With his sons in the ring, dressed the same way he did at one point in his career, and both wearing his actual gear from those eras, Borden and partner Darby Allin defeated the Young Bucks in the main event of the All Elite Wrestling “Revolution” pay per view.
Borden received a nearly 20-minute curtain call that lasted well after the cameras had stopped rolling for the TV time allotted for the pay per view. All he had to do was be put through three folding tables, and a pane of glass.
From “Blade Runner” Sting, to “Surfer” Sting, “Wolfpac” Sting, and “Joker” Sting, Borden’s ability to reinvent his character to keep with the times was one of the few things that places him among the Mount Rushmore of professional wrestlers of the past 50 years. Hulk Hogan went from red and yellow, to black and white, while Ric Flair has continued the same playboy image to age 76, where he physically became involved in the match on Sunday.
Borden returned to professional wrestling with AEW in December of 2020, shortly thereafter taking Allin under his wing. Over his 39 months with the company, Sting amassed a 29-0 record, retiring with Allin as the promotion’s World Tag Team Champions, where Borden indicated to company president Tony Khan that he did not want to win a championship.
Borden worked with every major professional wrestling promotion there ever was, starting in the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), which evolved into World Championship Wrestling (WCW), a decade with Total Nonstop Action (TNA), and a stint in World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). The close of his WWE run saw Borden suffer a presumed career-ending back injury during a match with Colby Lopez, who wrestles under the name of "Seth Rollins," culminating with his induction into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2016.
Borden’s Sting will forever be known for his transition from All American babyface (or good guy in wrestling speak), to the silent “Crow” persona shortly after the introduction of Hogan’s New World Order in WCW in the fall of 1996. The character was suggested by the late Scott Hall, inspired by the 1994 cult classic film. Borden would not talk on camera for nearly 15 months, culminating in dethroning Hogan for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship at Starrcade 1997, which was the highest-grossing pay-per-view in WCW history.
Borden underwent several gimmick transformations during his tenure in TNA. Originally the same vigilante from when WCW closed in 2001, Borden was also a mafia-type kingpin with his standing in the Main Event Mafia stable, ultimately finding a career rebirth in modeling his character after Heath Ledger’s “Joker” portrayal in the 2008 Batman film “The Dark Knight.” A devout Christian, Borden made it a point not to cuss, despite “Sting” teetering on the edge of sanity every time there was a microphone in his hand.
For WWE to acknowledge Borden retiring on Sunday on their weekly Monday Night Raw broadcast shows how far the industry has changed since breaking into the Continental Wrestling Association in 1985 with Jim Hellwig, who would go on to become “The Ultimate Warrior.”
Having won 13 World Championships (NWA, WCW, and TNA), two United States Championships (WCW), and five Tag Team Championships (WCW, TNA, and AEW), Borden left it all in the ring on Sunday one final time. Jumping from ladders through tables, being thrown through a solid pane of glass, hitting his signature “Scorpion Death Drop” several times, and ending with his trademark “Scorpion Death Lock” to earn the victory, Steve Borden was serenaded by chants of “You Still Got It” from the over 16,000 in attendance.
In nearly 40 years in the business, Borden never lost it.
-JC24