Ladies and Gentlemen! This is Sting

The wrestler called Steve “Sting” Borden began his professional wrestling career in 1985 and is easily one of the most popular wrestlers in the sport today. He started as part of a four man faction known as Power Team U.S.A. His partners were Jim “Don’t Call Me Ultimate Warrior” Hellwig, Mark Miller and Garland Donohoe. The team was managed by Rick Bassman and co-founded by Red Bastien along with Bassman. After a short time, Donohoe and Miller left professional wrestling. Borden and Hellwig remained and remained partners. Flash changed his name to Sting and Justice changed his name to Rock. They were known as the Blade Runners and enjoyed limited success. They wrestled for the Universal Wrestling Federation, which headquartered in Shreveport, Louisiana. They enjoyed limited success and Hellwig finally left the company in mid 1986. This left Sting without a partner for the moment until he teamed up with a wrestler named Eddie Gilbert. Together they won two tag team championships in the company and Sting later won a third one with Rick Steiner. Soon the UWF was bought by Jim Crockett Promotions and became part of the NWA. Sting was a face wrestler now and appeared in his first pay-per-view at Starrcade ’87 as part of a six man tag team match pitting him, Michael P.S. Hayes of Fabulous Freebirds fame and Jimmy Garvin against Eddie Gilbert, Rick Steiner and Larry Zbyszko and the match went to a time limit draw.

Sting was quickly becoming a rising star and had his shot at the NWA World Title against Ric Flair at the very first Clash of the Champions. He lost and feuded with Flair after that. Sting would go on to enjoy a prosperous and popular career with the NWA/WCW winning seven World Titles and several other titles. He even became a member of the Four Horsemen for a short time. Sting’s trademark look has always been a cropped cut blonde hair and brightly colored face paint. At one point while in WCW, shortly before the demise of the company, Sting would appear in the rafters of the arena with long black hair and black and white face paint that was reminiscent of the movie icon, The Crow. He also wore a long black trench coat and carried a baseball bat and was silent for the longest time. He shed the black trench coat after the Columbine shootings in 1997 as the shooters wore black trench coats as well.

When the WWE bought out WCW, Sting left the sport for a few years as he didn’t want to wrestle for Vince McMahon. Sting wrestled sporadically between 2002 and 2004 for the World Wrestling All-Stars and four appearances with TNA Impact. In 2006, one minute after midnight of January 1st, it was officially announced that Sting was with TNA. He had already turned down several offers to work with the WWE. In TNA, Sting has feuded with Jeff Jarrett in singles’ matches and tag team matches. Sting would go on to win two World Titles and one World Tag Team title with Kurt Angle as his partner.

After being in the sport for the better part of twenty years, Sting has proven that he still has got what it takes to be a wrestler and has what it takes to still be one of the most popular wrestlers ever to wrestle in the industry. Ladies and Gentlemen… THIS…IS…STING!!