On March 3 at AEW Revolution, Sting officially retired from professional wrestling after more than four decades in the industry. His sons Steven and Garrett Borden played a part in the magical night, playing past iterations of the iconic Sting character. While Garrett dawned the iconic Great American Bash 1990 American gear, Steven popped up in full Wolfpac era face paint accompanied with the jacket. Both sets of gear were from Sting’s personal collection, the original gears he wore for some of the most special moments of his career. They would play a part inside of the ring, too, as they landed some impressive Stinger Splashes to the Young Bucks. Comicbook’s Haley Miller recently had the opportunity to talk to Steven Borden about the big day, what it meant for him to take part in it, and more.
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When asked what was going through his mind when he originally got the news he’d be taking part in the entrance with his brother, Steven noted that the whole process has been years in the making. “This has been a conversation for probably years now. I can’t even date back as far as this has gone. Probably even before my dad’s AEW days, we always tossed around the idea of doing something together in the ring. Then when it formally became a thing, I think the thought was, you know, we just want to make sure it’s good for my dad. When it’s his last match, there really isn’t margin for error. So we started kicking around different ideas and we obviously landed on, ‘let’s do several generations of Sting.’ We’re hoping that the wrestling community adopted it well. I think it could have gone one of two directions, but given the history that my dad has in the business and all that, I think that really helped and it carried it through to be a memorable moment.”
The visual of these three versions of Sting two past and present day, was a real tearjerker moment for people that have followed Sting faithfully for the last thirty years. When Garett walked out as Surfer Sting, fans online thought it was Sting doing a throwback to his early career. But then when Steven walked out as Wolfpac, people began putting two-and-two together. As far as prep to fit into the gear and do the characters justice, Steven noted he and his brother went in two different directions with their approach.
“I would say the only modification — Garrett and I were probably going in different directions, physically in this. So Garrett, he mentioned, ‘look, I’ve been trying to get as strong as possible.’ And you know, that generally requires putting on a lot of mass. It doesn’t translate well on the camera. So that’s why he was cutting pretty aggressively. I was in a little bit of a different boat where I used to be much larger in my football days. I walked around close to 260 pounds and then I just got really tired of being that big and I’m not a pro athlete or a college athlete anymore. So I lost a lot of weight and I was at a point where I was going, ‘man, you know, I’m probably a little bit leaner than –‘ I’ll use a more, uh, tenuous word. I was skinnier. Uh, lean is too generous. I was skinnier than my dad was. So there wasn’t enough time to really put on the right amount of size to fully look like him in the short run that we had. So in my mind, I just kind of thought, ‘let me just hold on to this body weight.’ If I tried to get any bigger, I probably would have just gotten puffy going into the show. And so I was just trying to hold on to my weight and Garrett was going through some pretty aggressive dieting.”
Though the Borden brothers grew up with a WWE Hall of Famer as their father, wrestling isn’t something either of them took to. For Steven, he opted to play football in college (shades of his father). The wrestling world is a completely different animal but when he got out there his main concern was to make sure he didn’t mess it up for his father. “It was just a really cool experience. And I think what was on my mind at least was, ‘make sure this goes good for my dad.’ But like I said earlier, this is his last run. You don’t want to overshoot the Stinger Splash. For me, like our part was so small in the very beginning. The main concern was there’s about another 25 minutes after we leave that. Like man, my dad was going to be doing some crazy stuff in that match that a 25-year-old could get hurt doing that stuff and he’s 65. Darby of course was doing absolutely absurd things. So for me, what was going through my head is let’s get this part. Let’s enjoy this, hope that everybody adopts it well, or hope that it goes over well with the fans and don’t jump over the ropes and then just make sure my dad and Darby don’t get hurt. So as soon as our part was over, I sprinted to the back, Garrett and I both did, just to watch.”
As the match progressed, Sting did everything imaginable to make it a memorable final match. The almost 65-year-old went through glass panels and was tossed onto tables but perhaps the most adrenaline-pumping moment took place when Darby Allin climbed up a very tall ladder set up in the ring and jumped off of it into panes of tempered glass. “You know, he’s just wild man. Darby was set on doing Darby things. Yeah, maybe increased by a factor of two or three for this show and even just watching him stand at the top of that ladder — you know, cliff jumping or things in the past, everything doesn’t look that high when you’re on the ground. Then you get up there and it feels way higher. When I was on the ground looking at Darby, I was going, ‘he is up there.’ Man, like just the concern of, ‘I really hope Darby doesn’t get hurt and I really hope my dad doesn’t get hurt.’ Cause you know, I think we take for granted, it’s sort of rare for wrestlers to get hurt to the level that it ends the match in the sport. I think we take for granted that could happen. And if it did happen on my dad’s last match, that’d be pretty interesting. It would more importantly be a concern for Darby’s health, but he’s just an absolutely wild human being.”
Shifting to his viral Stinger Splash that excited a lot of fans (and earned him the name El Hijo Del Wolfpac Sting) his initial assumption about the move was that it was easy to execute. But as is with professional wrestling, sometimes the moves that look the easiest to do are actually a bit more difficult to do, especially if you’re not a wrestler.
“Yeah, I would say I had the assumption that the Stinger Splash is an easy execution. I did a few test jumps before, Garrett and I both did. It’s definitely interesting trying not to overshoot or undershoot. And so that was, I think the main concern was just don’t go over the top rope. It’d be a real shame to come out trying to bring back an era of Sting and just absolutely flop. I told someone earlier that if that was the free throw line that I jumped from, I probably could have done half court if I really wanted to go for it but, it is what it is. I think it was okay.”
“There’s actually, there’s a good story behind the jacket as well. Now one of my favorite memories with my dad, we had just basically agreed, ‘look, especially with Garrett, anything physical happens, dump the jacket.’ First, Garrett’s jacket is a collector’s item at this point. That’s the actual jacket that my dad wore 30 plus years ago and my jacket, not so much. It’s more generic, but it still is the exact one that he wore. So just, you know, ‘anything physical happens, dump the jacket first.’ And that was the plan. My dad calls us into the ring, Garrett dumps his jacket and I step into the ring and I keep mine on and my dad goes, ‘Steven, jacket. Take the jacket off.’ And I go, ‘I’m going to keep it on for one and then I’m going to throw it at him.’ And he smirked at me, like he smiled and goes, ‘all right.’ I just appreciated he got a kick out of it and I got a kick out of his response. It was funny.”
For his first time attempting it in front of a huge audience, Steven was satisfied with his performance but more than anything, he’s thankful that he didn’t overshoot it and go over the top rope and the wig didn’t fall off. “Thank God I didn’t go over. That wouldn’t have gone over too well.”
“I think it [getting the wig on] took longer than everybody thought because I have quite a bit of hair already. And normally when those wigs are used, it’s usually when someone either has shaved their head or maybe doesn’t have a ton of hair on the top of their head, so they had to try to figure out how to smash all this stuff down. So Miranda she put a ton of gel and parted my hair down the middle. It was a terrible look. So it was like cemented down to my head, then they put a cap over it and it probably took 45 minutes or so. I mean, she did an incredible job. Like you look, even zooming in on photos, it looks like the hair is coming out of my head. She said, ‘you know, this might give you a headache if I put it on too tight.’ And I said, ‘skew towards give me a headache because I’d rather have a headache later than this thing fly off.”
But the most haunting visual of all? His appearance under the wig cap. “Oh, that would have been — the look under would be worse than the actual image of the thing flying off.”
