Sting Dishes on Vince McMahon’s Reaction to Him Joining TNA Over WWE

After WCW evaporated in 2001, WWE was there to happily pick up the pieces. As one of WCW’s top commodities, it seemed Sting was destined for stardom in WWE, however, he swerved everyone, including Vince McMahon when he decided to join TNA instead.

During an appearance on The Apter Chat, Sting discussed Vince McMahon’s reaction upon finding out Stinger was opting for TNA over WWE.

“I ended up going to TNA and I’ll never forget having that conversation with Vince.” Sting said. “He’s on the phone with me and he says, ‘you know, Sting,’ he said, ‘I find this hard to believe. The legacy that you leave behind and the thought of you going to TNA is just, blah.’ That’s exactly what he said, ‘blah!’

Sting would remain with TNA for over a decade, but in 2014 he’d finally show up in WWE. Before his WrestleMania 31 moment, Sting wasn’t sure if McMahon would welcome him into the company.

“And so then you fast forward to me coming back to do WrestleMania, I sent out a text to Vince and Triple H, and I simply said, ‘have you guys turned the page on Sting yet?’ because I honestly didn’t know,” said Sting. “Did they turn the page? Are they done or would they consider a run up there?”

Sting admitted that WWE’s demanding schedule was one of the reasons he waited so long to join Vince McMahon’s circus. However, Stings says that TNA wanted to bring him in to build their promotion and that was an attractive idea for the WWE Hall of Famer.

“Yeah, I thought, ‘let’s try TNA.’ And, again, they kind of gave me what I wanted. Obviously, it wasn’t all about money with TNA, but the schedule though that I ended up having, that I could attain and they were very agreeable. And so, we did that and the rest is history. I planned on doing it for a year maybe or a couple of years. But they brought me in in hopes that other bigger name guys might want to come in and I thought that worked because, quite frankly, quite a few of them ended up coming in. Kurt Angle was the first. Mick Foley was there. [Scott] Hall and [Kevin] Nash, they were there. Scotty Steiner was there. Hulk Hogan was there.” Sting professed, “a lot of guys ended up coming in and it was a lot of fun. It really was,” he said.

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