Why did Sting never join WWE in his glory years

Everyone remembers Sting as the charismatic character on WCW who became the face of the company as a surfer-inspired multi-coloured gimmick. He was flashy, he screamed, and everyone loved the Stinger Splash.

As WCW evolved it caused Sting to do the same. He took a long hiatus from the company but would return to avenge and protect his company as a Crow-inspired man chilling in the rafters carrying around a baseball bat. Even if he never actually hit someone with his trusty bat (which he did), all it took was him pointing his murdered-out sports equipment at someone and fans knew he meant business.

But WWE was in operation and a viable choice for The Stinger all through his run with WCW. After all, before Sting was the man fans knew him as in WCW, he was a member of The Blade Runners and had a tag team partner who went on to have a lot of success in WWE. Sting's partner was known as Rock back then, but he might be better known as The Ultimate Warrior today.

Both Sting and his former tag team partner are both WWE Hall Of Famers now, but it took a long road to get The Man They Call Sting in a WWE ring.

When WCW was purchased by WWE, Sting had a chance to come to WWE but he still had his reservations as he opened up on the Into The Light documentary produced by WWE.

"I talked with Vince McMahon and he was really good to me, he was really good to me [...] But I just got this feeling that he didn't... I'll put it this way: all the guys from WCW that went to WWE when the acquisition happened by then to me there wasn't a real WCW because WCW was for so many years it was Hall and Nash, it was Hogan it was Sting it was Lugar it was the Steiner Brothers it was you know a certain package of guys that were gone.

Sting said that those WCW talents who were with WWE didn't really represent the groundwork of WCW talent that held the Nitro brand so high for so long. He also said that he was watching WWE television and noticed how guys were represented on WWE television who were being introduced from the WCW side of the equation.

The WWE and Impact Wrestling Hall Of Famer remembers watching Booker T make his WWE debut where he seemed to be going over in great fashion until The Rock made his way to the ring.

After Booker T and The Rock cleared the ring there was finally a moment where these two top representatives from rival companies had a chance to interact but as Sting remembers it, this didn't go well for the WCW guy.

"They come back-to-back and they turn around and they look at each other and The Rock looks at Booker T and he said, 'who are you?' And you know that one little comment was all it took to just bury somebody, in my opinion, bury somebody like Booker T and let's let the world know that you're a WCW guy and you're a peon here it was gonna require lots of work for Booker T to try and come back and he did because he's a talented guy. And after all the years I'd put into wrestling at that point it just seemed like a gamble to me."

Sting has since retired and did so under a WWE banner. But if WWE's booking strategies during the WCW Invasion would have been more promising to him Sting's in-ring debut would have been well before WrestleMania 31.

In fact, Sting's legendary run in TNA/Impact Wrestling might not have even happened which would have robbed the wrestling world of plenty of exciting moments. But what's done is done and you can't blame The Stinger for doing what he felt was best for his character in the long run because everything turned out pretty well for Steve Borden in the end.

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