10 WWE Number One Contenders Nobody Actually Thought Could Win

8. Sting

Cain Velasquez Brock Lesnar
WWE.com

Sting's WWE career was an utter shambles, wasn't it? The WCW Icon was brought in way too late, wasted in a WrestleMania match that only Triple H was interested in, a match that preposterously saw Sting lose. That's right; Vince McMahon waited years to bring Sting in, only to have him stare at the lights for Hunter Hearst Helmsley. Make of that, what you will.

The whole affair reached even higher levels of WTF when Sting returned to challenge Seth Rollins in the autumn. Yes, the reveal of statue Sting made for a pretty excellent television moment, but what right did Sting have in challenging Rollins for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship? His WWE record at the time was 0-1. Kevin Federline has more wins. Snooki too. Don't forget Michael Cole or Earl Hebner either, they also have more WWE victories than Sting.

WWE has a real issue with this sort of stuff. Legendary status trumps wins and losses, in all cases. Sting was worthy of a championship match by virtue of being Sting, but everyone knew that it was more of an achievement award than a potential landmark. Not even the prospect of Rollins having to wrestle twice in one night made a Sting victory plausible.

The expected thus happened. Rollins defeated Sting, injured him in the process, and an icon's in-ring career was over.

Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.