Story: While World Championship Wrestling had several iconic performers that built legacies on their stage, no one defined WCW like Sting. While others left to pursue greener pastures or prove themselves elsewhere, Sting remained until the bitter end. He would even be in the final match to take place in a WCW ring, when he battled longtime rival Ric Flair on the last Monday Night Nitro episode. In The Best of Sting, his evolution from a rookie that called himself a Blade Runner to an industry icon is explored, both in memories and via his work as a performer. With over seven hours of content dedicated to this colorful wrestler, I think The Best of Sting offers immense value to anyone who is a Sting fan, nostalgic for WCW, or just loves pro wresting in general.

Entertainment Value: This indeed over seven hours of content, presented in a combination of interviews and footage from Sting’s career. So there might be a brief segment where Sting and his peers discuss how he got started or his finishing holds, which is then followed up by a full match or a promo from the archives, which is an interesting format. I wish the documentary segments were more in depth, as those were always fun to listen to and have neat little memories involved. But the ones here are only a minute or two long in most cases, spread out with several matches in between, so the emphasis is certainly on the in ring and promo footage here. Which I can understand somewhat, as Sting has some terrific matches, but the match selection here isn’t the path I would have taken. So I found myself wishing some of the match time was traded for a deeper documentary dive, as there seems to be so much that be covered in additional interviews.

I should revisit my comment on the match selection, as I do think some of the choices made were less than ideal. I appreciate that the piece goes back to his early days for some footage, but it leaves that era pretty quickly in favor of his WCW work. I can understand the thought behind that, but a lot of the footage shown from his WCW tenure are well known and widely available. In other words, good content, but we’ve seen it elsewhere and can access it from other sources easily, so while fun to watch, more of the earlier, rarer footage would have elevated the release. The Blade Runners era could have been given more time overall, in my opinion, to flesh out his start in the business and how his early matches saw him progress as a performer. I also think less of the late stage WCW content would have been a wise idea, as some of those late 90s matches, even cherry picked, are lackluster. So less from the final days and more of his earlier work would have been most welcome. But overall, this is a solid sampler platter of Sting and a good point to branch out from, so fans of Sting or pro wrestling in general would likely find a lot to like with The Best of Sting.

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