Review for WWE The Best of Sting

The Best of Sting is one of the best DVDs I have ever been disappointed by. Confused? Well, I shall explain. Ever since Sting signed a Legends deal with WWE I have been waiting for the DVD (much like when the Utimate Warrior signed before his death). I expected a long two hour documentary, interviews with Sting, those who he worked with, who got him to become the icon of WCW.

What did I get? Three disks worth of matches, a few scattered comments and a brief overview of his career. That's it. If you knew nothing about Sting and bought this set thinking it would explain why he is often cited as one of the greats in the business then you will probably finish thinking: Ok, so he was a good wrestler, had some good matches, but you could have said the same about hundreds of different people.

The set goes the comment match, match , match, comment cycle which I absolutely hate and what is worse is that the only comments from Sting are from archive WCW interviews from 1995 and 1998? Now I could understand if that was the case for all the interviews, but comments from the likes of Hulk Hogan, Dean Ambrose and Tony Schiavone are all new. Did no one in WWE think to sit Sting down for a few minutes just so he could give a few thoughts on his career. What is even worse is that if you type 'Sting WWE' in Google or Youtube you will find dozens of interviews he has done since signing. Why could these not be inserted somewhere?

Now that we have the bad out of the way, I can focus on the good stuff of which this set has lots of. It features matches with the likes of Ron Simmons, Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Great Muta, NIkita Koloff, Vader, Steve Austin and many more.

It includes an old match of Sting with Ultimate Warrior as The Bladerunners which is a fine old skool match that shows that they certainly were a powerful team. He also teams with Rick Steiner against Ron Simmons and Mike Rotunda (who people may not know is the father of current WWE Superstars Bray Wyatt and Bo Dallas) which is again a nice match. They also include a Warrior/Sting against Hollywood Hogan and Bret Hart from 1998 which is a nice trip down memory lane, though not exactly a great match.

There is a great early NWA match between Sting and Mike Rotunda which really showed the rise of popularity of Sting as he competes for the TV Title. Also featured is an amazing match against The Great Muta. Muta is one of the most iconic Japanese wrestlers of all time and against Sting is a great mix of styles and shows just how adaptable he was.

Other great matches include those against Nikita Koloff, an amazing tag match with Sting and Great Muta against The Steiners from Japan. The match shouldn't work, but within the context of the match itself makes it special.
Of course they have to include a Dangerous Alliance vs Sting's Squadron match (though oddly not the Wargames match). Though it is a great multi-man tag match which is just brimming with talent from Ravising Rick Rude to Ricky Steamboat to, of course, Paul Heymann. There is also a great match between Sting and a young Steve Austin and it proves that he learnt from Flair about how to make an opponent look great.

It is not surprising that the other WCW icon Ric Flair is featured heavily in this set. These are all amazing, technical matches, but what is most amazing was just how much Flair made Sting seem like a credible threat. This is something most champions would be afraid to do, but this not only made his opponent look great, but himself too.

Included are 4 matches between them and they are all amazing. It includes an old match from the UWF which is nice, their match from The Great American Bash which is one of the best matches from WCW in general. A Nitro match which is a nice match.There is also his final WCW match against Flair which is fine for what it is and nice to see the evolution of them. It is though odd that they didn't include more as if you asked the average person to name their top twenty Sting matches you could guarantee that the majority would be against Flair.

With the evolution to 'The Crow' gimmick is given a disk all to itself, which is great. This includes the promo between him and the nWo when it was never quite clear who he was siding with. The inclusion of the Starrcade 1997 match against Hollywood Hulk Hogan is obvious. This was one of the most successful builds to a match ever, gaining a huge buyrate... but it is such a shame the ending was such a mess. There is also an interesting match against Scott Steiner and whenever I see him in his Big Poppa Pump persona I still can't believe it is the same person.

There is change to the red Wolfpac which was another change in the character from the silent black and white into the more talkative red version. This highlighted with a perfect match between Sting and Kevin Nash against Harlem Heat.

This is all great and though I would be lying if I said all the matches are great, if you are a fan of Sting and WCW then it includes a lot of faces that you will enjoy watching again. However, this does feel like a set cobbled together with no real thought put into it. In some ways it feels like this is unfinished and hopefully with rumours of him going into the 2015 Hall of Fame may prompt them to release a 'Special Edition' with some input from the man himself, because if they had done that it would have been perfect.