These two wrestlers are very similar and can be argued that they were equally iconic in the eyes of many wrestling fans. Both had similar mysterious personas with a very strong presence inside and outside the ring. Whenever they were in the ring, they were the ones who were in charge and backstage they played the role of the locker room leaders. These two never collided with each other (no, Mean Mark Callous vs Sting doesn’t count. That wasn’t The Undertaker) and for many years it was thought that we will never see a match between The Phenom and The Stinger due to taker’s loyalty to WWE and Sting’s reluctance to join WWE after WCW was bought out but that all changed when at Survivor Series 2014, Sting showed up. People lost their minds as they should have because it was a history-making moment but Sting was soon pushed into a feud with Triple H which, nearing Wrestlemania 31, became a WCW vs WWE rivalry. I personally found their Wrestlemania encounter quite entertaining but I think that they could have chosen an even better route instead of having Triple H bring out his golden shovel to bury a company which died FIFTEEN YEARS AGO. Not having The Undertaker vs Sting at Wrestlemania 31 was possibly the biggest missed booking opportunity in WWE history. Therefore, I’ll capitalize on this by letting my imagination run wild and book one of the possible ways in which Sting’s WWE run could have panned out. To put it briefly I’m going to do what we all love: Fantasy Booking.
So this is how my version plays out. On November 23, 2014, Sting shows up as he did at Survivor Series and helps team Cena win just like he did. Over the entirety of December, we see little vignettes from Sting in a weird spooky setting interrupting Triple H whenever he is on the mic. Those vignettes just contain weird zoom-ups on Stings face but that visibly scares the living hell out of Triple H. So, instead of making it longer than it needed to be without shenanigans, at TLC 2014, the King of Kings issues an official challenge to Sting for a match at Royal Rumble 2015 which is going to main event the show instead of possibly the worst Royal Rumble match ever that took place as the main event on that show. Over the next few weeks, Sting no shows to the contract signings and staredowns only boosting the ego of the cerebral assassin prompting him to call out Sting for being scared of him but Sting still no shows. As we enter the pay-per-view, there is still doubt looming over whether Sting will show up or not with even the match being billed as an unsanctioned match since there was no contract signing because in kayfabe at that point Sting wasn’t officially contracted by the WWE. I’m doing this to create a bit of hype making Sting’s appearance a special occasion rather than him showing up on random Raws to help Cena get some jobs back.
So after the Royal Rumble match takes place and Roman is booed out of the Wells Fargo Center, Triple H’s music hits and the crowd gets warm again. After he makes his entrance, he waits and nothing happens. Triple H grabs the mic to cut a pre-match promo but Sting’s music hits. It’s game-time. Now, I’m just going to copy-paste that Wrestlemania match between the two even with DX and nWo showing with one exception. Sting goes over because this isn’t supposed to be about WWE vs WCW. That shit ended years ago. Get over it, Vince! Anyways, Sting plants Hunter with the Scorpion Death Drop to keep him down for the three count. After the fight, there is only one man left standing in the ring and that’s Sting. The referee comes over to raise his hand and as Sting stands there with his hands raised, lights go out, and the sound of one single sonorous gong sound fills the arena. Everyone is bound to go wild…
Undertaker walks out and makes his long entrance as Sting and the entire crowd watch in awe. Keep in mind this is the first time that the Undertaker showed up after his twenty-one-year long Wrestlemania streak had ended at the hands of Brock Lesnar and there was this rumour going around at the time that Undertaker had retired. After an eternity, Taker enters the ring and is face-to-face for the first time, in this iconic moment, against Sting. They stare at each other for a while until Taker slowly turns his head towards the Wrestlemania logo as does Sting before The Phenom does his traditional throat-slitting gesture as his pupils roll back into his head. Now that’s how you end a big-four pay-per-view. Not with shoving Roman down our throats.
It is then announced on the website or the socials that the Undertaker will be addressing the crowd for the first time since his streak ended the next night on Raw. In that promo, he describes that he was lost and wasn’t himself last year but he’s back now ready to redeem himself and what better opponent to do that against than Sting. So Undertaker calls out the stinger and unlike in the previous weeks, Sting actually comes out when he’s summoned. Sting explains how he had wanted to face Undertaker for a long time but he takes a shot at him saying that since the Taker’s streak had ended he saw no interest in wrestling an “old, beaten-up man”. This infuriates Undertaker and now tensions start rising. Over the course of the next few weeks, we see no development on the feud as anticipation is increasing within the crowd. We hear nothing from both parties until the week before Fastlane Undertaker makes a surprise appearance on Raw. He grabs the mic and after a long moment of silence says that he has given it a thought and said that he realized that he didn’t want to fight someone who had spent the last eleven years in the “small leagues” while he himself had conquered and proven himself in WWE. This prompts a response from Sting who comes out with a bat in hand and shoots staggers down Taker with his eyes followed by pointing his baseball bat to the Wrestlemania logo. The match is made official: The Undertaker vs Sting Wrestlemania 31.
After Fastlane and in the weeks leading up to mania we are shown great matches of both competitors from the past by airing them on Raw in the third hour because honestly, nothing good was happening in the third hour anyways. There are montages and hype-packages as there should be because this is a dream match. On the go-home Raw before Wrestlemania, Taker and Sting come down to the ring for a scheduled face-off where not a single word is uttered. Sting does his weird crow shenanigans and Undertaker does the spooky light stuff as the lights go out and both disappear.
The stage is then set. It’s Wrestlemania and Undertaker and Sting go before the main event which is Brock Lesnar vs Roman Reigns. I am not making this the main event because of two reasons:
1) The main title should always be defended in the main event in my opinion and
2) Seth Rollins cashed in in the main event and I don’t want to take that historic moment away.
Anyways, the match begins and both are equally matched trading blows and judging by their ages, they’ll soon be gassed so I’ll keep this a twenty-five-minute match. There are multiple Tombstones, Death Drops, Last Rides, Scorpion Death Locks and Hell’s gates but the Phenom comes out on top with a Tombstone as to feed Vince’s ego and because Taker will be wrestling longer than Sting (albeit only a few years) hence it’s a good way for him to get his momentum back after giving up the streak.
So, this was what I saw in a potential match between these two legends of the sport and how I would have booked it. What do you think? Follow us on Twitter at TWMWrestle for wrestling news and articles. Thank you for taking the time to read this piece.