"If he can do it, I got to be able to do this," says Sting about wanting to be like a major Hollywood star
According to Sting, he was doing a lot of things that didn't work and being a pro wrestler was not his original dream. Sting explained that he wanted to make it like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He pointed out that Schwarzenegger didn't speak English when he started but made it. Sting thought that if Schwarzenegger could do it, why not him?
Sting will go down in history as one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, but that was not his original dream. Sting had other plans, but life took him in another direction and defined his career. In a storied career, Sting worked with the very best like Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Bret Hart, Triple H, and Kurt Angle, to name a few, in WCW, TNA/IMPACT Wrestling and WWE.
On a recent episode of AEW Unrestricted, Sting recalled that he was never interested in being a pro wrestler. In a sense, it happened by chance. A co-owner of a Gold's Gym in Reseda, Sting was approached by Rick Bassman, who wanted to use the gym for his three wrestlers to train and break into pro wrestling. They were also trying to recruit a fourth member, and for weeks, nothing happened. But then Rick asked Sting if he was interested.
"What about you? And I had no interest in doing that. But I was bartending in a nightclub, I was bouncing in the night club, I was auditioning for movies with no acting experience whatsoever. So I was reaching, I was trying to get somewhere, you know? Arnold Schwarzenegger was making all his movies and I'm like, he didn't even speak English in the beginning. Look at him now. If he can do it...I got to be able to do this. I wanted something and so, I thought, maybe, I'll try this."
Sting was convinced to pursue pro wrestling after seeing Hulk Hogan at a show in Los Angeles
Sting became convinced later when Bassman talked him and the other three wrestlers to go to a wrestling show in Los Angeles that featured Hulk Hogan, British Bulldog, and others. Sting was in awe at Hulk Hogan and said that he used to come to the gym to train. He said:
"Big guy with blonde hair used to come to the gym to work out all the time. People would freak out and they would say, 'don't you know that is? and I say, 'I don't know who he is.' He's Hulk Hogan. Who is Hulk Hogan? He's the guy from the Rocky movie. Ohhh..I know that guy."
On the podcast, Sting described that he had no idea who Hulk Hogan was and had no concept of pro-wrestling, having grown up in Santa Clarita, which didn't have wrestling on TV. On the flip side, he understood that Hulk Hogan was in movies and that's who he wanted to be.
He said that going to that big show convinced him that he could do this. His goal was to make it big like Schwarzenegger, like Hogan, and in a way, Sting did do that. Sting's return to wrestling with his stint in AEW will probably allow him to end his career on his terms.
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