Wrestlers With The Most World Titles (Across All Major Federations)

6 WCW Championships

4 Impact World Championships

2 NWA World Heavyweight Championships

2 WCW International Championships

For the longest time, Sting was described as the greatest wrestler to have never set foot in the WWE. That was no longer true after he made his Stamford debut in 2014, but the epithet seems to stick, adopting the form of "Greatest wrestler to have never wrestled full time for WWE". Well, that may be right. But is it actually saying much ?

It seems tacitly agreed when discussing the greatest wrestlers to have never signed with WWE that Japanese and Mexican stars are out of the equation. Sting would've been at the bottom of the ladder if the likes of Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi, Jumbo Tsuruta, El Santo, Blue Demon or Mil Mascaras were allowed to climb it. That leaves us only with rival American promotions as baskets from which to pick potential challengers, but the thing no one ever seems to bring up is that most if not *all* of these rival promotions' biggest stars have wrestled at some point for Vince McMahon (not even counting those who were WWE stars originally), leaving 'The Stinger' with no real competition. That's the case for WCW (Ric Flair, Goldberg, DDP, Booker T, Scott Steiner), ECW (Rob Van Dam, Sabu, The Dudleys, Taz, Raven, Tommy Dreamer) and TNA (Jeff Jarrett, AJ Styles, Samoa Joe). Who could've in fact disputed Sting's claim at the moniker? Abyss? Christopher Daniels? Freaking New Jack?

Sting has long held a distinction which when looked into doesn't really mean much. Sure, he was a gigantic star in WCW and one of its most popular babyfaces ever, and was so during the course of a 13-year main event push, but is he really on par with some of the the all-time greats, as his fan base claims he is? I for one think that for someone who has so often been compared with The Undertaker, Sting couldn't hold a candle to 'The Deadman'.