The Icon, Sting has opened up about his current run in AEW.
Sting initially rose to prominence in Jim Crockett promotions in the 1980’s, before becoming one of the biggest stars in the world as the company later became WCW. After WCW closed it’s doors in 2001, The Stinger wound up in TNA before later signing with WWE in 2014.
In short, over the past 30 years Sting has learned a thing or two about what makes a wrestling promotion successful.
Speaking in a recent interview with Paste Magazine, Sting compared his current run with AEW, to time spent elsewhere earlier in his career.
The master of the Scorpion Deathlock praised his current employers for having everyone pulling in the same direction, before going on to compare the atmosphere to a brief moment of calm in WCW.
“It is a place where you’ve got a bunch of male and female soldiers all sort of marching in the same direction, and pretty much everybody’s marching to the same beat. There isn’t really any factions or cliques or groups of people. Everybody is looking out for everybody and everybody wants AEW to succeed. Everybody wants… they’re really involved with other matches. They’re watching, and somebody will finish a great match, and they’ll walk back out and you’ll hear the entire locker room area clapping and applauding. I think there’s a great unity, really, to be honest with you, with most everybody there in AEW. Something that I’ve never experienced.”
“The closest I ever got was WCW, years ago, when Eric Bischoff took over and he was up there in the nosebleed sections, listening to fans and how they were reacting to the storylines and to each individual wrestler. You’ve had some of the biggest names in the business, Hall and Nash and Hogan, all of us, Luger… we were all sort of like walking together. Everybody was looking out for everybody else, and the creative juices were flowing, not just for yourself, with no hidden agendas. We had about 12 months of that, I’d say, and then it all ended. But here, I’d heard that’s the way the atmosphere was in AEW, and I walked into it and have experienced it first-hand now for six months, and that’s exactly the way it is. It starts at the top, and filters its way down. Tony [Khan] is a very personable guy, a very approachable guy. I’ve noticed he’s like that with just about everybody, it doesn’t matter who you are. It’s a good atmosphere.”
At AEW Double or Nothing Sting rolled back the years teaming with Darby Allin to defeat Ethan Page and Scorpio Sky.
In a stunning performance, The Icon returned to the ring for his first live match in six years, more than holding his own against his much younger opponents. Sting picked up the win for his team with his signature Scorpion Deathdrop on Sky, much to the delight of the capacity crowd.