Sting Comments on Wanting to Elevate AEW for His Retirement Match & Learning A Lot from Darby Allin
Sports Illustrated held a recent interview with Sting. One of the topics discussed included Sting’s thoughts about his upcoming retirement match at this Sunday’s AEW Revolution 2024 event and his goal of wanting to elevate AEW with the match.
“I want people to walk away saying, ‘How was that even possible?’ I want people to be entertained. I want to elevate AEW.
I never wanted wrestling to pass me by. That’s why I wrestled the way I did. This Sunday, I’m going to wrestle a way that will make people want to save the tape.”
Sting also gave his thoughts about how much the support he has received from pro wrestling fans has meant to him throughout his career.
“My lip quivers thinking about it. Wrestling fans, they’re in my heart. The Little Stingers aren’t little anymore. They’re adults now. We’ve all grown together. We’ve been through all of this together.
The relationship with the fans, that’s what brings this to a whole other level. I can’t tell you the amount of conversations I’ve had where someone would tell me that the only relationship they had with their father was watching Sting in WCW, or the ones where people told me they were bullied in school but they watched Sting and he made them feel strong. Can you believe that? I still can’t. The feeling that wrestling fans give me is as great as anything I give them. It blows me away. Hearing that I touched a person’s life, it’s very humbling.”
Sting also gave his thoughts about working with Darby Allin in AEW and his belief that he would not have been as successful in the company without Allin by his side.
“I’m in good hands next to Darby. It’s been an honor to see him turn into this polished star. I’m grateful my last hurrah was with him. I didn’t teach him much about wrestling other than psychology here or there. Less is more, I taught him that. I taught him that it’s good to lose if you can lose the right way. Overall, he’s got the wrestling down. But I’ve learned so much from him. I couldn’t have been this successful without him.”
QT Marshall Comments on His Reason for His Initial Departure from AEW & Talks with Other Companies
A recent episode of Sportskeeda’s WrestleBinge podcast featured QT Marshall as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Marshall’s thoughts about the reason why he decided to leave AEW this past November.
“So right about August of (2023), my contract (with AEW) was coming up… Right before All In and I actually had given my notice then that I was gonna leave and I was just gonna go wrestle… I had some other things I wanted to do and then Tony (Khan) and I spoke and he was like, ‘Well, why don’t you stay and you know, maybe I could do something more with you as the AAA Latin American Champion and stuff.’ I said, ‘Yeah, okay, sure.’ Ideally, I didn’t know what I was really gonna do. I had spoken to Scott D’Amore over at IMPACT and maybe I was gonna go do something for them and Tony was very understanding towards all of this stuff. So I signed this extension and then came time for the end of the year and Tony and I kind of spoke a little bit about stuff and my biggest thing was I just didn’t wanna sign a long-term deal contract. That’s it. But because of that, I had to resign from the job itself, you know what I mean? Because I couldn’t do one or the other so it was like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna resign. I have this idea to do Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling with Teil (Rhodes). I just have a lot of things I wanna do. I just kind of want to relax. I’ve been on the road five years straight’ and I mean, I’ve never publicly stated stuff but man, I worked harder than most people at AEW and if that ruffles feathers, I don’t care. I did. I busted my butt for them in hopes that maybe it would lead to more in the ring maybe. But they’re two separate things and when we spoke, Tony and I spoke about that. We both were on the same page about, hey, well, a lot of people think I left to become this big star. That’s not what it was at all.
Tony and I have spoken numerous times about this. I’m not gonna go to WWE just to be a producer. I can do that at AEW where I could work one day a week and I’m number whatever in the company in the top ten whereas if I go to WWE, I start at the bottom, I make less money, I’m on the road more. The only perk is that I get to be with my friend Cody (Rhodes), you know what I mean? And just to say that I worked for the WWE, which hey, it’s been my dream since I’m eight years old but it’s not my dream to be a producer for WWE. So, and I did speak to them and we don’t know what could happen. I mean, ideally, I’m back with AEW under just an employee role.”
Marshall also gave his thoughts about his decision to return back to AEW this past February.
“So, basically I flew down to Jacksonville to talk to Tony (Khan) in December maybe or maybe the first week of January? Something like that and I was just talking to him about stuff and explaining what I wanna do and you know, again, with the Turnbuckle (Championship Wrestling) stuff and I could go on the indies and wrestle all the time and go from Massachusetts on Friday to San Diego on Saturday, back to somewhere else on Sunday. That’s the indies, right? And I could do that and I might do that because that’s kind of the benefit that I have with working with AEW and that’s the biggest thing. There’s freedom. There’s freedom and there’s great pay, which I’ve earned. So it’s like, hey, I did step away and the direction AEW was going in, at that moment, when I was there, when Tony and I had our discussions which would have been in like Oakland, November 10th, that’s when I had spoken to him and let him know that I was gonna be staying home. So it’s not like the end of November, I put out a statement and that was the first anyone heard about it. I had been sitting home for weeks, and Tony and I, we have a very, very different relationship than many people do… He understood where I was coming from in the sense of like, could I go get a job at WWE? I’m sure. I spoke to MLW, I spoke to a bunch of places. I’m sure I could get a job somewhere.”
Marshall also gave his thoughts about the talks he had with WWE did not progress beyond the “feeling out” stage.
“So I’m back to the same ole position, Vice President of Creative Coordination and a lot of it is dealing with talent. It’s getting the talent ideas to Tony (Khan) because if not, if we don’t have somebody like that — Sonjay’s good at that as well. There are other people but, there’s a lot of talent and they all have ideas and AEW is that kind of company that — and this is not just AEW. I think every wrestling company. If you come to the table with ideas, whether they’re good or bad, we can filter through and then make them better or just tell you, ‘Hey, that’s not a good idea. Go back to the drawing board.’ Fine-tune them a little bit. ‘No, you can’t work with that person because that person’s doing something with this person…’ and whatever and it works. But you need all those people there and we all have to be one big team and so on and so forth and like I said, just to me, if I wasn’t gonna go to WWE and wrestle, which, I mean when I spoke to them, I think it was like a three, four minute conversation and they kind of just asked me what I wanted to do and I told them what I would like to do and we never even got past that point. I remember the guy that kind of linked me up with them was like, ‘Wait, you’re already going back to AEW?’ I said, ‘Yeah, because I understand what I wanna do and what I wanna do –’ even if I was a full-time in-ring talent at WWE, I couldn’t do all this stuff. Of course that’s everybody’s dream to main event WrestleMania but at the end of the day, that takes a lot of work, a lot of passion, a lot of sacrifice and so on and so forth and for the other stuff that I wanna do and what I have going on with the school and all this stuff, I just think this is the best fit for me. Unless it’s something that comes along and it’s the greatest opportunity and I can’t say no. But ideally, I’m not in that position so it’s not something I think about.”
Transcript h/t: PostWrestling.com
AEW News & Notes
Fightful Select reported that their sources stated that AEW officials currently do not have plans for Will Ospreay to remain aligned with the Don Callis Family for long following this Sunday’s Revolution 2024 event.
AEW and events distributor Joe Hand Promotions recently announced that they are partnering again for the airing of AEW’s Revolution 2024 event on December 30th at select out-of-home establishments across North America. Unlike with prior AEW events, this will not include Revolution 2024 being aired in movie theaters.
RJ City recently revealed on Twitter that the Zero Hour pre-show for this Sunday’s AEW Revolution 2024 event will be starting at 6:30PM EST.
As noted before, a plagiarism lawsuit against WWE and AEW was dismissed without prejudice this past November due to legal-related issues over Anthony Duane Wilson, person who filed the lawsuit, failing to serve the defendants within a required time frame. PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported that Wilson had filed a new lawsuit and managed to properly serve both WWE and AEW based on court records. Johnson reported that AEW responded to the lawsuit on February 23rd denying all of the claims made against them in the lawsuit and requested for a trial by jury to be made. WWE reportedly had received an extension and now have until March 7th to file their official response.
In a recent preview clip for the next episode of the Straight Talk with The Boss podcast, wrestling legend and co-host Magnum TA revealed that he will be in attendance at AEW Revolution 2024 for Sting’s retirement match.
In a recent interview with The Athletic, AEW CEO Tony Khan gave his thoughts about how he had wanted to bring Swerve Strickland to AEW when the company first launched but was unable to due to Strickland being signed to WWE at the time. Khan stated “After his (Swerve Strickland’s) first match against Tony Nese on AEW Rampage, Chris Jericho walked back to me and said, ‘This guy is really amazing. Where did you find him?’ I’ve been watching him for years. I wanted to bring him into AEW when we first launched, but he had just been signed by WWE. Swerve is a wildcard. We saw that Swerve is a breakout star. He won the Tag Team Championship in his first year and went on to have a massive 2023 while being showcased as a singles star. The idea was to showcase Swerve in feature positions with the intent and belief that crowds all over the world would buy into him. I believed he’d become very popular.“
The Athletic also held a recent interview with Swerve Strickland discussing his thoughts about how he has managed to connect with crowds. Strickland stated “There are, like, four different layers of Swerve that people get to witness. If you don’t resonate with Swerve the mogul, the artist, the rapper, then you’re going to resonate with the filmmaker. If not the filmmaker, you will resonate with the in-ring competitor. If not the in-ring competitor, the faction leader of the Mogul Embassy. By showcasing myself every week, people have gravitated and started recognising what I’m made of. It intrigues people, and people understand what I’m fighting for.“
In a recent interview with Sports Illustrated, Paul Wight gave his thoughts about Sting’s legacy and the influence Sting had towards his own wrestling career. Wight stated “We met in December of ’94. Before I’d even signed with WCW, I got invited to a show in Chicago and we met there. He was extremely humble and gracious. Throughout my career, I’ve seen stars, guys who thought they were stars, guys who made money, and guys who didn’t. Sting was everything you could ask for. He was this incredible babyface. As far as the locker room goes, Sting never had heat with anyone. There were all these different camps in WCW, but Sting got along with everybody. You could always tell he cared about the fans. That’s why he still connects with people. It’s very genuine. Somebody has to cook and somebody has to eat, and Sting taught me that core philosophy. I learned that my first job in a match is to get my opponent over, then get the match over. That’s Point A and Point B. If you do that right, you’ll automatically get yourself over. That’s not, ‘You do your stuff, I’ll do my stuff.’ It’s bigger than you. Some guys only take care of themselves, and good for them. But the guys I respect most are the ones who make people better in the ring. That’s someone like Ric Flair, he has to be mentioned. So does Sting. I couldn’t have asked for a better influence early in my career. Sting made towns for WCW and became a household name. If you booked Sting in Tupelo, Mississippi on a Saturday night, Sting would show up and do it. He put in the work and became their franchise guy. He became a legend in Japan, too. He’s now an incredible asset for AEW. Sting is a guy who understood what it is like to work against guys who were really good, but the wrestling world didn’t know them yet. He did that for Crockett Promotions, WCW, TNA, and now again in AEW. Sting’s the guy that always understood what this is about. Whether he was getting his shoulders pinned, or getting his arm raised, he made sure the crowd enjoyed the hell out of a match. He never got involved in the locker room drama. When there were problems, he worked through them. For him, this was never about ego. I wouldn’t be where I am without him, and wrestling wouldn’t be where it is, either.“
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