10 Part-Timers Who Screwed With The WWE Roster

7. WWF Vs. WCW (Fifteen Years Late)

When NWA, WCW and TNA veteran Sting - called the biggest name never to compete in the WWE - actually signed with WWE in 2014, you could visualise the brains of pro wrestling nuts the world over going into meltdown. Would he be treated like the star he still was? Or would his character be buried in some form of calculated game of oneupmanship, as had happened to Goldberg?

The truth was somewhere in between.

Sting's first match in WWE would be marketed as the last skirmish of the Monday Night Wars, and take place at WrestleMania 31. His opponent would be none other than part-time WWE legend Triple H, who certainly sold the whole angle as a really big deal, and continued to do so right up until he pinned the Icon after nearly nineteen minutes of gimmicky, interference-heavy action. Whether Sting was used appropriately, given his status and the cachet involved, is an argument for another article. However, that nineteen minute match bloated to thirty-two minutes after those self-indulgent entrances were taken into account - and the interference was from defiantly middle-aged and mostly retired key members of the New World Order and D-Generation X.

Was it fun to watch? Absolutely, in a kind of wincing, half-smiling kind of way. Could that thirty-two minutes have been used more effectively? Definitely. Why couldn't Sting have faced someone from the active roster - someone who represented the company, like Randy Orton or John Cena? If WWE were adamant about Sting doing the job in his first match for them, wouldn't it have made more sense for that to be a money feud that could make the name of a young heel like Seth Rollins? Imagine the kingmaking turn if Rollins had gone over Sting earlier in the card, and then turned up to insert himself into the main event and snatch the gold? It would have been the heel equivalent of Daniel Bryan's turn from the previous year.

Forget the next year which saw Rollins booked as a chickensh*t heel champion: he'd have been cemented as a villain on the level of Triple H in his prime. But then maybe that was the whole point... only Triple H gets that kind of rub.