TNA: Sting to Meet Ric Flair on Impact Wrestling? Say It Isn't So!

Don’t you wish it was 1988 all over again?

If you are not big on spoilers, then by all means stop reading this article. But there is a big event tonight on Impact Wrestling that bears acknowledgement and it centers around two of the greatest in-ring performers ever to lace up the boots and put the tights on.

The only problem is we will not get the performance from Sting and Ric Flair that made the rivalry arguably the best of the 1990s.

In a spoiler form tribalwrestling.com http://tribalwrestling.com/tna-impact-wrestling-resultsspoilers-08-18-11-august-18-2011/ Flair challenges Sting. If Sting wins, he is handed Hulk Hogan.

I assume this is part of the continued groundwork to bring the two icons back to the ring one last time, presumably with the right to ownership of TNA on the line.

It is said that Flair wants to wrestle the Icon one last time. And if Flair wins, then Sting will retire from the business.

How exciting! But it’s not 1988 or 1995. It’s the present and “if” the two wrestle tonight, it probably will not be the showstopper that captivated millions of fans in arenas across the country.

I’m happy and saddened by this at the same time.

Flair essentially made Sting. He hand-picked him to help carry the torch after he retired (seems like that will never really happen).

Sting made Flair better, and Flair helped put Sting over as the best of his generation. There are a few who can hold claim to that as well, but Sting is in that debate, no doubt about it.

I’m reminded of the great clashes, the times when they wrestled together and the chaos that started it all. I am reminded of the “Black Scorpion” and the War Games and Sting joining the Horsemen for a brief time or was an “associate” of them.

I am reminded of how Sting broke character on many occasions to tell the crowd how Ric Flair has been a friend and someone who helped him climb the mountain.

I’m reminded of all that and the first and final matches of Nitro where younger and more agile competitors pushed each other and how in the end, Sting could carry Flair when it used to be the other way around.

Sting/Flair was just as compelling as Flair/Steamboat, Flair/Rhodes. Flair/Piper and even Flair/Hogan.

It is based a lot on the same qualities that Flair had spoken of in his book, “To Be the Man,” with there being one true hero and one true heel.

Sting has had some great matches with some great opponents. He went through larger men (The Giant, Vader), former friends (Lex Luger, Barry Windham) and some mortal enemies (Rick Rude, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash) and in the end, it all led back to “The Nature Boy.”

Let’s hope the match goes off and there is a fair fight. We all know this is a subplot involving Immortal, maybe Kurt Angle and certainly Hogan. The only way it can be true to form is showing it how it used to be: two men coming together to try to catch magic.

Only problem is this time, the magic appears on paper to be lost and the idea is somewhat of a joke...at least in my eyes.

Oh, how I wish it were 1988 again.