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411’s WWE Untold: How Sting Finally Debuted in WWE Report

May 18, 2019 | Posted by Robert Leighty Jr.
Sting WWE Image Credit: WWE

411’s WWE Untold: How Sting Finally Debuted in WWE Report

-I covered the first episode of this series about the failed WWECW and didn’t realize until a few days ago that a new episode was dropped in April. This episode focuses on Sting and his WrestleMania debut match against HHH. To set things up this show features a few talking heads doing voiceover work covering the topic in question while highlights and behind the scenes video is shown. The talking heads for this episode are Sting, HHH, Road Dogg, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and Shawn Michaels (the latter two doing their voice over work together).

Run Time: 21:20

-Road Dogg starts off and says Sting was the flag bearer for WCW and Hall talks about how Sting at Mania finally gave him a taste of everything there is to do in wrestling. HHH talks about how a 15 year old him would have been blown away being told he would be wrestling Sting at Mania while dressing as Terminator. Sting says words can’t describe the reaction from the crowd and it was a dream come true.

-HHH in WCW footage as he talks about knowing Sting in WCW, but only cordially as Sting was one of the top guys. Sting says he wanted to do something with WWE and sent a text to Vince and Paul. Vince responded first and said they would work something out.

-Sting makes his first WWE appearance at Comic Con in 2014 to promote the 2K game. The crowd went nuts for Sting and HHH says at first it was all just the video game deal. They weren’t sure if he was feeling like getting back in the ring. Sting says with the response from the fans he decided to go full force. HHH says that a deal was reached for an in ring run and Sting had a list of guys he wanted to work and Taker was at the top of the list.

-They actually give us a graphic for Sting vs Taker, but that gets shot down as HHH says Taker wasn’t available. Sting says he has always been outspoken about having a match with Taker. He has so many creative ideas for a program with Taker and it is the one time he will say smoke and mirrors would have been ideal. That is the one regret he will have in his career as he knows it would have been a memory that nobody would forget. Road Dogg says they discussed Sting/Taker, but it didn’t pan out as Taker had creative and HHH had some creative so the chips fell where they did. He does think it is best to keep the dream match as a dream. That is some fancy way of talking around the fact that they didn’t want to give the fans the one Sting match we wanted.

-HHH then goes on to say that Sting said the next guy on his list was him. According to HHH he was already booked to face Rock at Mania 32 and they were booking things based on that as they were going to spend a year building to it. That didn’t happen as Rock’s schedule changed.

-Now Sting says that it was HHH who brought up the idea of the two of them working together at Mania and he was all for it. That kind of contradicts what HHH just said, unless Sting did have HHH on his list and HHH just jumped on it when the plan with Taker went out the window.

-Sting makes his WWE debut at Survivor Series 2014 to a crazy response from the crowd. Sting says that Vince did the honors of sending him through Gorilla personally which he doesn’t normally do anymore.  Road Dogg says he worked behind the scenes on the match and had some say how things were laid out. To him it was a perfect build to start the story to Mania.

-HHH talks about how Sting had been out of the ring for some time and while he didn’t show any nerves heading into Mania, he could sense it was there. Sting mentions that he wanted to pull off the match and be at the best he could be. He wanted to do his best for Vince and wanted fans to came away happy with the match instead of being embarrassed to see him out there.

-Road Dogg talks about how Sting was nervous and had no problem letting people know. Dogg’s solution was to tease Sting all weak and joked with him to push the button for help on his necklace if he fell and couldn’t get back up. Nice!

-HHH says Sting didn’t need Mania to cement that he was a big star, but at the same time it was something he felt he needed. Sting mentions that Mania is so much bigger than anything he ever did in in WCW.

-Nash says the idea for the nWo/DX involvement was pitched to him at the Hall of Fame and he thought HHH was joking. Shawn mentions all members of the Kliq were at the Hall of Fame and as they were doing photo opts you can hear HHH tell them he just wants to be in the ring with all of them tomorrow. Nash laughs that he didn’t bring his knee brace, which he never forgets, and now he has to do something physical.

-Dogg says that after the Hall of Fame they all went over to Levis Stadium and he knew what they were planning would be magic even if the match sucked. Wow, way to have confidence in HHH and Sting.

-The Day of Mania and just before the match there is a cool moment with Vince and Sting. Vince tells Sting to enjoy the hell out of the moment as he deserves it and Sting just keeps thanking Vince for the opportunity. Sting and Vince together is still just a surreal site to see. Sting says he kept thinking about what Steph told him: just take it all in and Sting says he made sure he did soak in everything. Sting talks about how enormous the moment was and that this was more than a wrestling crowd, it was a WWE crowd and they didn’t care what he did in WCW or TNA.

-Funny moment as HHH is show under the stage getting ready for his entrance and smoke from Sting’s entrance starts billowing in on him. He says he didn’t see Sting’s entrance in rehearsal and knew nothing about smoke being used, so he was kind of nervous as he didn’t know if something caught on fire. Some great behind the scenes footage here.

-Hall talks about the Asian drummers Sting had for his entrance which is cool, but then HHH comes out dressed as the Terminator with an army of Terminators behind him. Shawn jokes that he hears HHH has connections. Wonderful!

-HHH discusses the match and was worried a few minutes in when Sting seemed to tweak his knee, but he was fine and things went well. HHH knew that once the other parties were involved things were going to get great. Hall jokes about how DX ran down the ramp and he, Nash, and Hogan knew they were walking down. They didn’t realize that through the curtain was another hallway, so that is why there was a delay after their music hit. Road Dogg jokes that it took the nWo 45 minutes to get down the ramp.

-Hall talks about putting the brawl together and he told Kid to go to Hulk and Kev and Billy could go off and beat each other up. Hall has mentioned in another interview that like always their idea was to feed Hogan since he is Hulk Hogan and why he got X-Pac as he could bump the best for Hogan.  I was losing my mind at my friend’s house during this brawl and really didn’t care that it didn’t make sense that the nWo was helping Sting.  They could have had DDP, Booker T and another WCW guy (Flair) run in, but everyone really wanted to see DX vs nWo.

-Nash says that Gunn rushed him and drove his side into his knee, which didn’t have the brace he normally wears. Dogg says he and Hall were just kind of dancing and when he looked over he saw Nash on the ground holding his knee and he thought it good that he wasn’t wrestling Billy.

-Shawn was in a different hiding spot and he missed out on the group brawl, but talks about the moment of getting in the ring and hitting Sting with SCM. It also gave him a chance to talk to Ronda Rousey, who was at ringside.  HHH talks about geeking out seeing the nWo and DX battle on the floor and it made him feel like a kid again. Sting puts over the moment as well and how he just wanted to create something for the fans.

-HHH wins the match with a sledgehammer shot and this is what I was curious to see. Will they address the negative reaction to HHH going over Sting in his WWE debut? HHH says that people will say that he should have put Sting over to give him the moment, but The Rock situation made that impossible. He doesn’t think it took away anything. Sting mentions he hears it all the time as well and he asks the fans what they remember about the match and it’s always nWo/DX and for him it was about making memories.

-Hall talks about HHH discussing the plan and he was surprised to hear “and I hit him with the sledgehammer and get the pin.” He doesn’t think it took away from the match, but he was surprised to hear the way it would end. Road Dogg says there was a different plan for the outcome, but creative got involved as they go back to showing Rock/HHH stare down from later at Mania and then those creative plans didn’t pan out as they thought they were going to. In retrospect he says they probably wish they would have done things the other way, but it was still a great match and moment.

-Sting talks about the shaking of hands after the match as at the time it was thought to be a one off and it was just a way to show respect. HHH says that at times they will draw back the curtain and instead of saving that moment for backstage, they let the fans be part of it.

-Sting brings up how Flair for years has told the story of how if Sting had gone to the WWE 25 years ago he would have been the biggest start ever and Sting thinks about that, but at the end of the day believes everything turned out the way it was supposed to. It was closure for him in a way. They show some highlights of Sting returning in the fall in the build to his match with Rollins (which is a great match all things considered) and Sting ends things by saying his match with HHH is one of the greatest moments in WrestleMania history.

-The WWE is very good at this documentary pieces and this was no exception. Kudos to them for touching on all the things people have complained about: Sting/Taker not happening and HHH going over. I do think they was a bit of stretching the truth and while I buy that Rock/HHH may have been the long term plan for Mania 32, I still don’t see why HHH losing to someone like Sting a year earlier would have hurt that match. You can also tell that Sting would still love that match with Taker and considering the matches they are throwing out for the Saudi shows, I wouldn’t rule out Sting/Taker yet though I don’t know if Sting can pass a physical test anymore after the episode in the Rollins match. Perhaps we may just be stuck with Taker/Sting in video game form much like Hogan/Austin.

-Thanks for reading!

article topics :

Sting, WWE, WWE Untold, Robert Leighty Jr.