Retirement of Sting

As I've babbled previously on this blog, I've had a deep appreciation for Sting, the professional wrestler. Aside from his wrestling work, he has talked at great length about his Christian faith and about how he has always tried to follow the path of Christ and to be a good person. I respect him. The news came out the other day that, due to a neck injury, he is going to retire from professional wrestling & that it will be announced that when he is inducted at the WWE Hall of Fame induction ceremony on the Saturday night prior to Wrestlemania 32, he will announce his retirement officially.

It's really too bad. As this article highlights, Sting didn't go to WWE when WWE purchased WCW. Instead, he went to TNA and helped that fledgling company thrive. After finally arriving in WWE, the "dream match" everyone on professional wrestling websites wanted was Sting v. The Undertaker. When the Undertaker's match for Wrestlemania 32 was announced to be against Shane McMahon, I wondered if something was wrong with Sting. Seriously, the thought went through my mind that instead of Shane v. The Undertaker, if the original plan had actually been to have Sting v. The Undertaker but (for some reason) it couldn't happen.

Now I know why it isn't going to happen. I actually had envisioned Shane "calling in a favor" to Sting, as part of the buildup to WM 32, to have Sting act as Shane's proxy and take Shane's place. After all, the storyline goes that Vince McMahon has The Undertaker stepping in for him, to be (as Shane said on last Monday's episode of Raw) Vince's "bitch" so it would make sense that Shane would summon Sting to help him.

See that's why I should really be a WWE writer - I get the whole storylines of what WWE is trying to do and that storyline would have made a lot of sense. Certainly, I do not get excited about Shane McMahon fighting the Undertaker. It reeks of a desperate ploy to bring Shane back onto WWE programming. I know Shane isn't going to win. It's a given. Vince McMahon will watch his son get pummeled and beaten. The only way this swerves out of the ballpark is if the Undertaker turns on Vince and "lays down" for Shane so that Shane wins. That seems unlikely because Shane and the Undertaker battled (briefly) on Monday's episode of Raw in order to build up Shane as a "fighter" who won't back down.

The way I see it, Shane McMahon is (roughly) my age and has no business being in the match he is in. None. That's why I expected Sting (getting back to the original topic) to be Shane's proxy and give fans like me a match I would have paid to see.