Sting’s Pay as the Crow

Hey Scott,

So, I was just wondering, during the year and a half Sting was creeping around in the rafters, how did they determine his pay? He wasn’t main-eventing pay-per-views, he wasn’t doing house shows, WCW had a less robust merchandising empire than WWF and no Sting shirt was as hot as nWo or Austin 3:16. I presume he was getting paid a fair amount (or was Sting such a good soldier he was cool with taking a year of just downside pay just for the story?) so did they treat his appearances like matches and paid him a comparable amount to the other main-eventers? Or just jack up his downside rate in exchange for not having him wrestle ? If so did that piss off the other workers who were busting their tail and Sting was just bounding down and beating the shit out of everybody with a bat? I mean, we’ve all heard stories about Hogan being pissed off he was ‘out of shape’ for Starrcade but was Nash pissed? DDP? Savage? Flair? Luger? Or did most people appreciate the hard work Sting did for years up to that point and knew it was the right thing to do for that story?

Also, while Starrcade 97 did draw extremely well, was Sting pushing buyrates and ratings before then?

Much appreciated

​Sting didn’t really have a "downside" in the same sense that we know WWE contracts. He was contracted in the same sort of way that Brock Lesnar is today — He gets paid (x) dollars for the year (something like a million if I’m remembering correctly) and he works a maximum number of dates for each year. If they want him to work more, they have to pay him more. It wouldn’t specify that he actually has to wrestle in matches, just show up ​as instructed, which he did. He was basically on TV every week for that year, and they were literally paying him to sit in the rafters. But think about it this way: WCW was basically a television company that did wrestling, so it just happens that his role on the show was "guy who sits in the rafters" rather than "guy who pretends to wrestle".

As for pre-Starrcade, the Crow stuff was a big ratings draw, but he was never really put into a position to affect buyrates one way or the other previously, so it’s hard to say.