At Forbidden Door 2, in the year 2023, WCW legend Sting took part in the penultimate match of the Pay-Per-View sandwiched between Kenny Omega and Will Ospreay's masterclass and Bryan Danielson submitting Kazuchika Okada with a broken arm in front of 14,000 ravenous fans in Toronto.
That's…certainly not a statement anyone would have imagined being true even four years ago, when Dynamite debuted on TNT on a Wednesday night in October of 2019.
Taking the ring in a six-man tag alongside Darby Allin and Tetsuya Naito versus Le Suzuki Gods, Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara, and Minoru Suzuki, Sting most notably took a brutal 630 splash laid out on a table by Sammy Guevara before rising from the dead like a zombie – one of the best developments of his late-stage career – to go full-on Frankentein's monster on his foes to set up a big win for the leader of Los Ingobernables de Japon against the former leader of Suzuki Gun.
Discussing a career that seemingly won't end after the match during the Forbidden Door media scrum, Sting was asked about how much longer he can go in the ring and revealed that, while retiring at Wembley Stadium during All In would be a pretty incredible optic, he isn't quite ready to hang up his boots just yet.
“I have not decided on a date, for sure. A lot of people have actually wondered if I was going to retire at Wembley. That would be kind of cool, but I don’t see that happening. I think I’m going to continue on. Tony has been in my ear here and there saying, ‘Steve, you can stay as long as you want.’ I’m not sure how long that will be, but like I said a few months ago, ‘Showtime' is just about over with, and it truly is, but I’m looking forward to going back to London. Last time I was there, I was Joker Sting, the crowd loved it there, and it was not the big stadium, it was just the Arena but still a great crowd. I’m looking forward to heading back over there,” Sting said.
Would it be cool to see Sting hang up his boots in Wembly after an incredible “bonus” run in AEW? Most definitely, but as the Stinger noted later in the media scrum, he'll know when he's done with professional wrestling, as he doesn't want to stay past his in-ring expiration date.
Sting reveals when he thought his career was over before Forbidden Door.
While Sting plans to continue to wrestle for the foreseeable future, there was a time when he was really thinking about hanging up his boots for good, as he also noted during his post-match media scrum.
“Yeah, at the very beginning, talking with Tony and starting with AEW, I honestly didn’t know how long it would be. Yes, I signed a multi-year deal, but I literally in the beginning took it one day at a time. Then, you know, I got up to maybe a week at a time and then maybe a month at a time and, you know, I’m still sort of doing that, just playing it by ear, seeing how my body feels. And, you know, I have had these moments where I thought it was over. Like I didn’t feel like I was performing at the level that I needed to, Arthur Ashe, that was two Arthur Ashe shows ago, I felt like I was not performing well and I really thought it was the end but, you know, we were walking up the ramp and Darby was like ‘you killed it, you killed it,'” Sting said as Allin lauded his peer pressure,” Sting said.
“No, so one day at a time, and as for how I’m training now, honestly, when I go into the gym, honestly, I don’t say ‘today’s a chest day, today’s a cardio day, today’s a whatever day,’ I go into the gym based on how he feels, I’ll make the next move, so I have to wait to see how my body’s feeling long story short.”
Now, for fans who don't have an encyclopedic memory of every AEW match, Sting and Allin actually wrestled FTR at Grand Slam in 2021, a match that, according to Dave Meltzer, was good enough to earn a 3.75-star rating in the Wrestling Observer. Still, it's interesting to note that Sting really is considering his every move before he makes it and would rather hang up his bat than put on an inferior product in AEW or elsewhere. When his retirement match eventually comes around, fans can safely assume he left it all in the ring.
Follow Us
Subscribe