Sting debuted at Survivor Series to a hair-raising pop from fans, which was made all that more amazing to consider when you think back to what he did to earn that pop, essentially walking out onto the entrance ramp and pointing a baseball bat.
WWE fans younger than, say, 15, would have had no idea who Sting even was, given that the WCW legend had toiled in obscurity in TNA after the 2001 demise of the promotion that he had carried for more than a decade.
And yet there was Sting, and there was that massive pop.
Vince McMahon, standing a few feet away, in Gorilla position, had to be at the same time pleased with himself for finally getting Sting to appear on a WWE live event and also pissed off at the world that somebody that he had not a single thing to do with creating or building up was getting the biggest response from his fans of anybody on any of his shows all year.
It was obvious from the moment that Sting announced he wasn’t re-signing with TNA in January 2014 that he was going to end up in WWE, and that eventually he’d get his WrestleMania moment. It also seemed obvious that his WrestleMania moment would end with him doing the job, so that Vince could lay to rest WCW, on life support the past 14 years, basically waiting out Sting to cash out on his way out, once and for all.
But you have to think that McMahon began to have second thoughts on how to book Sting basically from the first moments of the pop at Survivor Series.
McMahon seems a man bent on proving points, but he’s first and foremost a shrewd businessman, and he has to see that he can make a little more money off Sting than a one-off WrestleMania.
Fans have long clamored for a Sting-Undertaker match to send both icons off into the wrestling sunset. What better venue to close out their careers than WrestleMania 32 in Dallas in front of what we have to anticipate will be the biggest live crowd to ever watch a wrestling event ever?
But to get there, we have to have Sting and ‘Taker with some value left. Undertaker can get the win over Bray Wyatt Sunday night and not diminish Wyatt in any way, as long as Wyatt is booked properly, gets to dominate the match, only to lose to a late ‘Taker rally.
Sting needs a clean fall over Triple H, bottom line. And then from there, let him lay low, with the occasional surprise appearance to remind the world that he is still a thorn in the side of The Authority, as long as that tired gimmick continues to be trotted out to waste time on WWE programming. Then, by SummerSlam, we start the slow buildup, with video montages from Sting and ‘Taker raising the heat until we get to Royal Rumble, when we get the confirmation of what we’ve all wanted for years being a reality.
You don’t need to trot these guys out on Raw for months to build anticipation for their joint WrestleMania moment. Seriously, you could just book the match, tell people it was on the card, and WM32 would break attendance and WWE Network subscriber records.
You just have to do things right Sunday night to lay the foundation for what damn well better be to come.
– Column by Chris Graham
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