Sting & Ultimate Warrior
By Scott Keith on 6th April 2021
Scott. I know lots has been said on your blog about Sting & Warrior both having failed 1990 title runs. I’ve been a wrestling fan for 30 years and both of these still baffle me. So a couple of quick questions
1. Even though both runs were considered failures – going into 1990 there is absolutely no way you don’t give both of these guys a shot on top like they did right? I can’t find any fault in the thinking of either the WWF or WCW of going with both guys as champ.
2. Looking back would you have waited longer for both guys to win the title, done it sooner, or at the exact time that they actually won it?
3. What was the more direct result of the failed runs – bad booking, or not strong enough opponents to work with after their title wins?
4. Speaking of strong opponents – who would have been your ideal program for both guys after winning the title?
1. You had to take the shot with both guys in 1990, you're absolutely right.
2. The timing for Warrior was right, but Sting was three months too late due to the knee injury. He should have won it in February at the peak of his overness.
3. With Warrior it was partially a failure on his part to connect with fans at the level of a World champion rather than an undercard attraction, and mostly lack of a real opponent once he won the title. With Sting, obviously a lot of it was bad opponents but even still the Black Scorpion shit drew some MONSTER ratings so it's hard to lay the blame there 100%. But the booking wasn't great for him either.
4. I tend to agree with the people who say that if Warrior had stepped up to defend Hulkamania after Earthquake put him on the shelf, they could have run with that during the summer, leading up to Hogan returning at Summerslam for THAT blowoff with Quake and then spun Warrior off elsewhere. Alternatively, I really liked the chemistry that Warrior and Dibiase had on that Main Event show I just watched and they probably could have had a decent program too. As for Sting, if they hadn't destroyed Great Muta on the way out of the company, they could have kept him around and unmasked HIM as the Black Scorpion and that would have been pretty awesome. Or, as always, Lex Luger, who didn't really need to turn babyface earlier in the year just because they felt the need to panic about it. Had he remained heel, he would have been a STRONG challenger for Sting all summer.