Minus-Star Match Reviews: Sting vs. Tony Palmore – NJPW Battle 7

Hey, remember Sting? That wrestling icon who retired recently? Well it turns out that he had not one but two of the worst matches in modern times.

Everyone knows his infamous match with Jeff Hardy (in which Sting did absolutely nothing wrong but history has put it on his record as much as Jeff’s all the same), but he also had another dreadful match over 15 years earlier in which he also did as he was told and was panned for it all the same. What happened in this first match? Read on to find out.

The story

This match was part of the long and winding road that was Antonio Inoki’s intended retirement from pro-wrestling. Inoki wanted to include some callbacks to his rookie years and his desire to prove his worth against legit martial artists ahead of his fight with Muhammad Ali. After beating William Ruska in the fall of 1994, sportswear company BVD approached Inoki with the prospect of hosting a small 4-man single-elimination tournament that would take place on NJPW’s biggest annual show in the Tokyo Dome.

The four men announced for this tournament were: Inoki, boxer Tony Palmore, Dutch martial artist Gerard Gordeau, and Sting. One of these things is not like the others.

Out of all the people WCW offered up to Inoki for his doomed tournament (it was a foregone conclusion who was winning the thing), they offered up Sting, who had no amateur grappling or combat sports background and entered pro-wrestling because he saw it as a career venture based on the pageantry and the glamour. It was the ultimate fish-out-of-water situation for Sting; the question that remained was how much would he – and NJPW’s January 4 Dome show – flop as a result.

The match

This took place on January 4, 1995. It was rated -**** by the Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer and was voted as the worst match of 1995 (think about how much shit that encompasses). Palmore has boxing gloves on while Sting doesn’t.

Palmore lands some boxing strikes and a few roundhouse kicks. He pushes forward until Sting counters a punch with a hiptoss. Palmore gets a quick ropebreak to escape a chinlock and resumes his boxing rush. He keeps Sting on the defensive and hits a spinkick to Sting’s gut and an ax kick to the back of the head. They go at it again and Sting hits an amateur-style German suplex/back throw. Sting blocks a few more punches but Palmore lands more kicks to the head. Some of Palmore’s follow-up punches land, others don’t, and it looks like no one is officiating this match clearly. Palmore goes for one more roundhouse kick but Sting catches his leg and trips him. Palmore gives up after about five seconds, giving Sting the win.

Winner after 4:29: Sting

Review

I think Meltzer’s initial scathing rating for this match was intended to serve as some kind of warning against the idea of putting a pro-wrestler in a martial arts fight. Though there were two problems with this: 1) Despite rumors of his WON appearing on various wrestling bookers’/promoters’ desks over the decades no-one took those ratings all that seriously for a very long time so this rating fell on deaf ears; and 2) this show made a lot of money (an estimated $4,800,000 US in 1995 dollars) so I wouldn’t be surprised if Sting used yen or dollar bills to wipe his sweat off after this whole deal was over.

Side rant about Meltzer’s motives aside, this was a dumb match that shouldn’t’ve happened. Sting looked uncomfortable in the ring with Palmore but did his job like a good little soldier. He took punches and kicks without complaints and did his best to move around like a legit martial artist. But despite his best efforts the action was awkward and inconsistent. Sting had to rely on what little knowledge of amateur grappling he had to score and offensive points. His blocking looked amateurish in the worst way possible. He spent more time eating hits like a human punching bag than he did trying to make this into something semi-believable. It was, for all intents and purposes, the spitting image of what one would expect if a pro-wrestler entered a combat sport without any training.

Final Rating: -**

This isn’t some kind of abomination that completely demeans the wrestling business; if anything it was an attempt at making NJPW’s combat sports-driven product even more realistic. The problem, though, was that they brought the wrong person. If they had someone like a Vader, Dean Malenko, or anyone else with some legitimate combat sports background, this would’ve been much more palatable and passable.

Even if the odd wrestler out was a complete jobber with no chance of winning, at least said person would’ve fit this setting better than Sting, who ended up in a match with Inoki later on in the show that was just as much of a waste of time as this one.

Thanks for reading.