WINC Watchlist: Sting’s Biggest Matches, Ranked

Sting is probably the most celebrated skilled wrestlers of all time, and for good reason. He had a profession spanning 39 years, winning championships in nearly every promotion he worked for, and has inspired so lots of today’s athletes that certain matches you see in corporations like WWE, AEW, or TNA would not look the identical had it not been for “The Icon.”

After wrestling in five different many years, and having already going through one retirement within the 2010s that was caused by a serious neck injury, Sting finally hung up his boots and baseball bat in 2024. He has made cameo appearances here and there, mainly in AEW to assist out his old friend and tag team partner Darby Allin, but he has also been a daily face on the convention circuit where his meet-and-greet lines are all the time somewhat longer than many of the other famous faces in attendance. Sting will likely appear at more conventions down the road, but he’ll appear as Steve Borden going forward as he retired his iconic face paint in 2025. With that said, the paint may or may not come back in the long run now that his son, Steven Borden Jr., has began his own wrestling journey.

Along with his face paint now officially gone, the Sting character has gone with it, but his profession was so long and storied that it’s only right that we have a look over it and discover a number of the matches that made children all over the world “Little Stingers.” Sting was involved in some thrilling matches within the NWA, WCW, TNA, AEW and Recent Japan Pro Wrestling (not in WWE though, that run was anything but thrilling), so narrowing this watchlist all the way down to just five matches was a challenge in itself. The person himself all the time used to say that “The one thing that is of course about Sting is that nothing’s of course,” but we’re sure that these are the five best matches within the profession of the person called Sting.

To anyone reading this who believes that to ensure that a match to be considered good that it must be long, please turn your attention to this match.

1992 is commonly considered to be the best yr for WCW from an in-ring standpoint. While it won’t be as popular as a 1997 for instance where the corporate was kicking WWE from pillar to post on Monday nights, the corporate had a roster that might exit every night and placed on a few of the perfect wrestling you could possibly find anywhere on this planet. At the highest of the cardboard, you’ll often find Sting in what was by far his best yr on all fronts, and going into the Beach Blast pay-per-view, he was sitting pretty because the WCW World Heavyweight Champion.

In between the battles he had with The Dangerous Alliance and Big Van Vader, he bumped into essentially the most unpredictable wrestler of his day, Cactus Jack. He could be seen as a lovable teddy bear to most fans nowadays, but Mick Foley was the definition of unhinged in his run with WCW, and was known for putting himself through unimaginable pain so long as the person he was facing ended up being worse off. Sting and Jack had already crossed paths plenty of times months prior to Beach Blast, but as Vader loomed in the long run, Sting put his championship aside for one night to try to beat Jack at his own game; violence.

This Falls Count Anywhere match isn’t just like the matches of the identical name that you just see today. It is not one other way of describing a Hardcore match that is stuffed with plunder, it’s an arena-sized brawl where two men will stop at nothing with a view to put an end to their opponent. Jack enters first, and in an awesome little detail, he doesn’t even get within the ring, he waits on his knees on the doorway ramp for Sting as he knows that’s where he’ll win the match. Sting then again, being the generational babyface he was on the time, tried to maintain the match as clean as possible within the early going by doing legitimate wrestling movies. 

Naturally, that did not last long as Jack would do his patented dives off the apron to the concrete floor. Sting sold a rib injury brought on by Vader perfectly when Suplexing Jack in the group, and even the chair shots to the back have somewhat more venom behind them than what most WCW fans were used to seeing. The match comes full circle once they get back to the ramp, and Sting uses his big match experience to get the win in under 12 minutes. No wasted motion, all killer no filler, whatever you would like to call it. This match went full speed from the opening bell and really is one among Sting’s (and Jack’s) best matches.

Limiting this watchlist to a top five was all the time going to be tricky considering the length and quality of Sting’s profession, and one among the casualties of only picking five matches is that I can not include the complete trilogy between Sting and Big Van Vader from WCW in 1992 and 1993. 

The primary match at The Great American Bash in July 1992 will cater more to those that like somewhat more tragedy of their wrestling because it’s Vader who comes away with the victory, despite Sting getting inside inches of finally determining easy methods to take the massive man out. Vader also wins the third and final match at SuperBrawl 3 in February 1993, which was a Strap Match that, despite having an ending that plenty of people weren’t comfortable with then or now, is top-of-the-line WCW matches of 1993, and is a first-rate example of easy methods to do a Strap Match right. It’s extremely clear that Bryan Danielson took some inspiration from SuperBrawl 3 when it got here to assembling his Strap Matches with Bray Wyatt and Ricky Starks in WWE and AEW respectively.

With all that said, it is the second of the three matches that lands itself on this watchlist. As previously mentioned, Sting was so near getting the victory at The Great American Bash, and the mammoth jigsaw puzzle that was Big Van Vader still needed to be solved. The thing is, Sting actually had all the pieces that he did the primary time around however the puzzle still couldn’t be solved. As this match went on it hit him, Vader had the remaining pieces and he needed to get “The Mastodon” to slide up with a view to get those pieces. Sting would proceed to hit high impact moves to wear the massive man down, but in the long run, it was Vader making careless errors that led to his downfall.

Sting forced Vader into making mistakes that caused “The Mastodon” to overcompensate his own strategy, but that played right into Sting’s hands. Vader put extra force his signature moves that ended up making him more drained than usual, and right as he thought he would have the opportunity to land the all vital killing blow, Sting activated his trap and got the all vital victory, and revenge for the loss at The Great American Bash. Sting would win the “King of Cable” tournament by beating Vader, which is not relevant as anything aside from the pride of the TBS Superstation was on the road, but Vader would bounce back in style by winning the WCW World Championship from Ron Simmons two days later.

Sting and Vader had electric chemistry once they stepped within the ring together, and all three of their matches from this feud are value watching in their very own right. Nonetheless, it is the battle at Starrcade 1992 that stands out to me as the perfect match the 2 men ever had together.

It is the match that took a young Steve Borden from being just one other promising young talent on the NWA roster, to being the person that turn thousands and thousands of individuals across the United States into wrestling fans. Sting had only been a part of the NWA for around one yr by the point the primary Clash of the Champions event took place in March 1988, but from the moment he transitioned over from the UWF, everyone knew that they’d a future star on their hands. He quickly rose through the ranks and started difficult Ric Flair for the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship at house shows, but he would all the time lose or come away with a disqualification victory. Nonetheless, that might all be preparation for this match.

To say there was lots of pressure on Sting can be an understatement. The primary-ever Clash of the Champions would go head-to-head with WWE WrestleMania 4 as a way for the NWA and Jim Crockett Promotions to fight back against Vince McMahon’s underhanded tactics of counterprograming Starrcade and the Bunkhouse Stampede with the inaugural editions of Survivor Series and the Royal Rumble. The show can be broadcast on free television while WrestleMania 4 can be on pay-per-view, meaning that lots more eyes can be on Sting’s title match with “The Nature Boy,” and throw within the incontrovertible fact that he had only been an expert wrestler for 3 years on the time to make things much more vital.

Regardless of all of that pressure, and the load of a complete promotion on his shoulders, the gamble worked as this match is seen as top-of-the-line for each Sting and Flair. It starts out like many would have suspected, Flair probably not taking his opponent seriously and knowing that in spite of everything of the 60 minute matches he had done up until that time, he could go all night if he desired to whereas Sting likely couldn’t. Nonetheless, because the clock steadily ticked by and Sting began to grow in confidence, each Flair and the group within the Greensboro Coliseum realized in real time that there was a probability, regardless of how small, that Sting could actually win this match.

Despite all of the punishment he sustained, including wrestling a big portion of the match on one good leg, Sting swung things in his favor because the match neared its end. The moment where Sting fires up through Flair’s chops is engrained into the minds of fans all over the world to at the present time, and when Flair gets locked within the Scorpion Death Lock within the closing seconds the constructing appears like it’ll take off with how loud it’s. Flair managed to survive and the match led to a forty five minute deadline draw, nevertheless it didn’t matter. Sting was a made man after tonight, and regardless that it happened in 1988, this match still holds up.

Completing the 1992 trilogy of matches for this watchlist (or quadrilogy if you would like to include each his 1992 matches against Big Van Vader) is that this, quite possibly the best WarGames match within the history of the business and top-of-the-line bouts that WCW ever produced. We talked about this in our WarGames watchlist that we did before Survivor Series last yr nevertheless it bares repeating, WarGames is a quite simple match to book. The heels will need to have the advantage, there should be enough blood to provide transfusions to everyone backstage, and the chaos must not stop until one member of a team simply says “I literally cannot do that for one second longer.” Out of each WarGames match that has ever happened, that is the gold standard.

While it is a watchlist dedicated to Sting, you possibly can’t discuss this match without giving flowers to everyone else involved. Steve Austin and Barry Windham are the iron men of the match, kicking things off for his or her respective teams and bleeding principally from the opening bell. The roar from the group when Ricky Steamboat and Dustin Rhodes enter the match is deafening, with Rhodes’ introduction being coupled with Sting climbing to the highest of the cage to stop Madusa from giving The Dangerous Alliance a fair larger advantage. Rick Rude and Arn Anderson clean house for the heels, Nikita Koloff pledges his loyalty to the Squadron, and each Larry Zybszko and Bobby Eaton mean well, but they find yourself being the weak links for his or her team when all is alleged and done.

As for Sting’s performance, that is “Surfer Sting” at the height of his powers. He’s on fire when he enters the match, pulling off probably the most impressive feats of strength you may see anywhere by Gorilla Pressing Rick Rude above his head, causing Rude’s back to hit the roof of the cage repeatedly. When people discuss how big of babyface someone like John Cena was, return and watch Sting on this match and realize that Cena really was Sting for his generation. Every movement, physical or non-physical, got a response from the group. Sting could probably push every member of the group down a flight of stairs and they might still cheer for him on this match, he’s just that guy in WCW.

There may be an actual sense of urgency, even throughout the 2 minute intervals, that you do not get with modern WarGames matches. AEW might need the blood side of things nailed down, but there’s an energy running through this match, especially when it gets to “The Match Beyond” where everyone realizes that they should end this now before things get too out of hand. You simply do not get that with any modern version of this stipulation. Truly an iconic match with top-of-the-line Sting performances you will note at any point in his profession. Perfection.

In lots of points of life, it’s the way you finish something that leaves more of an impression on people than anything you could possibly have done before. Up until AEW Revolution 2024, Sting had been an expert wrestler for nearly 40 years. He had countless classic matches (just take a look at the remainder of this watchlist for instance), won dozens of championships everywhere in the world, and earned himself a legion of hardcore fans who followed him from company to company. But all the pieces has to return to an end in some unspecified time in the future, and should you can end something on a high note, there’s not anything quite prefer it, and within the case of Sting’s profession, he went out on the best possible note.

Until Hiroshi Tanahashi retired from wrestling at NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 20, you can be hard pressed to search out a retirement match higher than Sting’s, where he and Darby Allin defended the AEW World Tag Team Championships in a Tornado Tag Team Match against The Young Bucks. The entire presentation from start to complete is only one big celebration of “The Icon” and it’s wonderful. Sting sitting in a movie show watching all the clips from his profession that are not owned by WWE, “Seek and Destroy” by Metallica blaring out of the speakers yet another time, and the 2 cherries on the icing on the already huge cake, Sting’s sons coming out dressed as previous versions of their dad gets you right within the mood for one last ride with “The Stinger.”

That last ride turned out to be probably the most exciting and chaotic in AEW history. In fact it was going to be excessive provided that Darby was within the match, but even essentially the most experienced AEW fans didn’t expect him to launch himself head first from the highest of a ladder through a pane of glass on the skin. Even Sting at 64 years of age went through a pane of glass as Matthew and Nicholas Jackson looked to spoil the party that was the last match for “The Icon.” They pulled out every trick within the book, even giving each Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat Superkicks for attempting to become involved, nevertheless it turned out that Sting didn’t need their help.

Everyone went into this match believing that Sting would should lose as it might make sense for The Young Bucks to parade around, not only as champions, but as the boys who sent Sting into retirement. Nonetheless, because the match went on, increasingly more people believed that “The Icon” wasn’t going to go gently into that good night, and he didn’t. Sting locked within the Scorpion Death Lock on Matthew for the victory, and he was given a send-off fitting of a person who’s probably the most influential performers of all time. Sting saved the perfect for last in his profession, and his retirement match is crucial viewing.