Every Impossible Wrestling Return Ranked From Worst To Best
4. Sting
AEW is the long-term storytelling promotion.
Hangman Page’s epic quest to prove himself Elite is perhaps the best illustration of the sheer scope with which AEW tells its stories. The MJF Vs. CM Punk programme was more compact, though equally intricate and emotionally intense. There’s an argument to be made that Sting’s arc was just as intelligent, though his special attraction status probably undoes it. Still, that AEW takes this much care up and down the card is indicative of why it is the long-term storytelling promotion.
In retrospect, Sting’s early run scans as the best sort of manipulation, in that fans were very much convinced by AEW that he wasn’t allowed to perform in physical angles. Or indeed capable of performing in physical angles. He was, after all, an old man who had retired following a cervical spinal stenosis diagnosis.
And then Brian Cage plunged him to the canvas with a wicked powerbomb in an angle booked to advance a cinematic match at Revolution 2021 that, while very good, wasn’t a true indication of what he could do. In one of the very best moments of the year, at Double Or Nothing, he no-sold a suplex on the ramp, popped up to floor Scorpio Sky and Ethan Page with a dive, and worked one of several remarkably great straight matches.
With a cunning grasp of how to drip-feed the work, Sting evolved from constantly interrupted guardian of the invisible wall to balcony dive enthusiast, appearing ageless under the paint in a run so tactically magic that it makes fans feel like kids all over again.