Tony Khan revealed that Sting, like many other AEW wrestlers like Chris Jericho and Cody Rhodes, has been given a large level of creative input and freedom. Sting came up with last week’s ‘hoodlums’ backstage promo with Darby Allin, according to Khan.
“I’ve known him a long time. He’s a great person,” Khan told Chris Jericho on the Talk is Jericho podcast. “When he became available, it made all the sense in the world, and I thought it would be great to sign Steve into an agreement to come in. We talked, and now we’re doing exactly what I wanted to do and what he wanted to do. I think it’s worked out great. It’s been great for us, and he’s really happy too.
I can speak for him coming in, he’s been really optimistic, and he’s just having, I really believe, a good time. The promo that Sting and Darby did this week, the hoodlums. Darby’s a hoodlum, and Sting’s a hoodlum too. It’s great stuff. He came up with that, and it’s just trying to ask him to be creative, giving him the situation, put him in a situation and asking him, what would he say and do in this situation? And that was what Sting and Darby would do, and that was awesome.”
He added, “As far as my favorite thing that’s a start to finish thing that I did a lot of stuff on, I brought it up before but definitely the whole Darby against Team Taz and what it became and then bringing in Sting. It’s still going, and it’s been going a long time,” Khan pointed out. “I think there’s been a lot of cool moments. Ricky coming in. Like I said, didn’t have him as the name but knew we needed to add somebody with Brian [Cage], and that was clearly the guy and then Will along the way.”
‘Powerhouse’ Will Hobbs said on AEW Unrestricted that he didn’t know in advance about Sting’s debut, “I wasn’t told anything. If I knew something was gonna happen, I would have been prepared. I didn’t know anything. It’s Sting. It’s almost like seeing a f**king ghost? I still get chills and goosebumps thinking about that.
“To be honest with you, I thought something like maybe some technical difficulties happened. ‘Why are the lights going out? Somebody playing around because they don’t want Cody to get hit in the head with the belt again?’ I’m like, ‘Shit. Takin away my shine.’”
“So I’ll tell you this, Sting was coming out, and I saw that bat drop. And I know when he has that, for me watching wrestling as a kid, when he has that bat, he doesn’t f**king play around. So I’m like, let’s go. Let’s get the hell out of here. I’m pretty smart to know when I to need the bounce.” Wrestling Inc transcribed Tony Khan’s comments.
