Remember When We Thought That Sting Was Going to WWE in 2011?

In early 2011, rumors of Sting making his long-awaited WWE debut began to surface. This was due to the teaser video WWE released in February 2011. You remember, the one with the man with a trench coat walking into a cabin while it rained outside? Yes, that one.

WWE has done mystery vignettes over the years and this one is one of them. Shortly after the first one aired on Raw, the theories of Sting going to WWE started to rise. All of this was based on an analysis of the video to see how everything matched up to Sting. This continued for weeks as more promos about “2.21.11” aired on Raw.

The cryptic vignettes led to plenty of speculation that Sting would finally appear in WWE.

The talk online was nonstop. The speculation grew more due to a report published on the NY Daily News at the time catching on to the news. Everyone took this as a confirmation that Sting signed with WWE. At that point, it was nearly a decade after WCW closed. But Sting was still an active competitor in TNA Wrestling at the time and he did not sign a new contract with the promotion yet. If Sting would have signed with WWE in 2011, the dream match between him and The Undertaker would have happened.

But what we got on the February 21st, 2011 edition of Raw (which was one week after The Rock returned), was the return of The Undertaker. That was at least expected. Everyone was anticipating for Sting to make his entrance to challenge The Undertaker for a match at Wrestlemania 27. But then Triple H’s music played.

Nope, no Sting, it was Triple H challenging The Undertaker. Looking back at this three week period, I can see why the wrestling community thought that the promos were for Sting because the very last one, showed The Undertaker and the commentators never acknowledged him by name. The biggest theory at the time was that Sting was going to the cabin to encounter The Undertaker. Then comes the next question: What led to the decision of having Undertaker face Triple H at Wrestlemania 27? That question will never be answered.

Then, TNA did their own version of the vignettes. This time, it was “3.3.11” and it came across as laughable and a knockoff of what was already the talk of the world as they copied WWE’s homework. Sting returned to TNA that day and defeated Jeff Hardy for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship.