Forever Heel: Sting’s Heel Phases

Columns, Top Story

The Stinger is making waves in WWE. Even though Sting is an all around good guy, he does has dabbled in villainy. So I thought I’d introduce you to each of them…

1) Blade Runner Sting: In Sting’s early matches, he was teamed with the Ultimate Warrior. They were basically a LOD rip off, and basically squashed other teams. Bill Watts protected them well, and they were UWF’s monster heel tag team. Warrior would leave UWF for World Class, and Sting would keep improving.

2) Four Horseman Sting: I don’t know much about this Sting. He wasn’t technically a heel, and the Horsemen were all rule breaking tweeners. This worked okay until Sting won a title shot at Flair’s World Title, then it was Horsemen Beat down Time, playa. Sting would go on to have a love affair with Kita Kolloff, and Dusty Rhodes.

3) Happy Beach Party Sting: This Sting wasn’t a heel, but this was pretty bad. He got into a bro-fight with Lex Luger, and replaced him with Davey Boy Smith. This is where the WCW Mini-Movies began. Cheetum, a cartoonish little person, the White Castle, and Sid trying to kill Sting all happened at this time. RD Reynolds used this era to make himself a billionaire, by pointing out how horrible this was. Let me be clear, the matches in WCW were okay at this time, but the mini-movies hurt the action in the ring. I kept watching WCW, but you could put a title on an eggbeater, and I’ll be okay with it.

4)NWO Wolf-Pack Sting: The Wolf-Pac was another tweener faction. They were WCW’s answer to the Avengers. The members included Kevin Nash, Konnan, Lex Luger, Macho Man Randy Savage, and later Sting. Sting left his black and white Crow look for a red and black Fubu jeans wearing look. This Sting was technically a tweener, and hit people with his bat.

A lot of IWC hates this version of Sting, but the fans lost their shit when he joined the Wolf-Pac. I have no idea why he joined a NWO splinter group, but who cares? WCW was never known for their tight continuity.

So yeah, this Sting was just a face that used cheating, as long as the heel was a big enough bad guy. He used it on Raven, and Kurt Hennig, but not Lodi, or Disco Inferno. This Sting also talked and didn’t brood around in the rafters.

5) Actual WCW Heel Sting: By the Summer of 1999, The NWO was long dead. Sting was back up in the rafters, and the WCW franchise again, then Hulkamania returned. Hogan ditched his Hollywood Hogan character and went back to being the red and yellow Hulkster. This was horrible because WCW let Hogan act like he was never a heel, that turned heel, and actively tried to bring down WCW by creating the greatest heel faction of all time.

Sting was rightly pissed, but hid his true intentions until he faced Hogan for the WCW WHC. Sting used his bat on Hogan, impressing heel buddies Luger, and DDP. In fact the next night on Nitro a 6 man tag match was set up for Halloween Havoc’ 99. It would’ve been Hogan, Bret Hart, and Ric Flair versus DDP, Lex Luger, and Evil Sting, but Russo happened. InsteadSting beat Goldberg sorta, while Ric Flair was buried in the desert, and Hulkster left the event because Russo demanded Hogan “lay down”…this was Russo’s version of a reboot. Sting would turn back to being a face by the next PPV.

What little we saw of this Sting showed that he was bitter, and unwilling to maintain his persona if WCW was just going to hand Hogan everything. He’d even show up without makeup. This Sting didn’t work because Sting is really a hell of a nice guy. Fans weren’t buying it. We’ll see this again when Cena turns heel.

6)Main Event Mafia Sting: The Main Event Mafia was a heel TNA faction. You could join as long as you had two World Title reigns, from two different companies. Scott Stiener, and Taz were the only members that didn’t meet that requirement, but who’s going to tell Scott Steiner, “no”, he’ll just call you a “bastard”, in front of your family.

This Sting allowed the other MEM members to handle the beat downs for him, while he held onto the TNA World Title. He wasn’t a face here because he never tried to stop his allies’ villainy. He just preferred not to get his hands dirty. This Sting would later turn face when the Main Event Mafia turned on him.

Sting’s Top Heel Rivals
5) Rick Rude
4) Muta
3)Lex Luger
2) Hollywood Hogan
1) Ric Flair;

CH Punk comes from Beverly Hills, California; but considers himself a citizen of the World. Punk also turned heel at age 5, after receiving a LJN Iron Sheik figure for Christmas. On that day he vowed he would stuff his Sheik figure up Hulk Hogan's nose, to ruin Hulkamania. By 1995 Hogan had already ruined it without CH's help.