Sting’s retirement match was a beautiful, bloody spectacle that left fans in awe

Sting’s retirement match was proof he understood wrestling better than 99.9 percent of his peers.

Sting is one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time. Not just because he was an icon, but because he was never afraid to change.

The WCW, TNA and AEW icon wrestled the last match of his storied, five decade career at AEW’s Revolution pay-per-view event. It was pure spectacle, a main event befitting a legend from the moment the 64-year-old wrestler walked onto the ramp to the guitar riff of his first entrance song; Metallica’s Seek and Destroy.

What followed was a match replete with Sting tributes — including from his sons decked out in different eras of Sting fear, wrestling legends like Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat and a litany of broken glass and shattered tables.

The match was unrecognizable from the ones Sting put on in the 80s or 90s. It was unfathomable to dream up when he appeared to be winding down his career in the 2000s. But there he was, in his 60s, crashing through pressed wood and panes of glass.

This wasn’t a man who coasted to his finish. He kept his foot on the gas, evolving with the game and leaving as one of the most compelling figures in the sport. In the end, Sting and Darby Allin retained their world tag team championship over the Young Bucks, surviving some truly absurd bumps on Allin’s part and an extended two-on-one beatdown from the AEW executive vice presidents on the sextagenarian opposite them.

A scorpion deathlock iced the deal, but the crowd watching at home was treated to one last touching throwback. In true WCW fashion, the pay-per-view broadcast cut off exactly at midnight ET as Sting was still winding down his retirement speech. For the former face of the company that mastered the “folks, we’re out of time” finish on Monday Nitro and who once had to re-air a pay-per-view headliner on cable TV the next day after running long, it was a fitting inconvenience.

Fortunately for us, one fan at ringside captured his full monologue:

Sting can always return on Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite for a proper goodbye alongside a Darby Allin who, at least theoretically, will have fewer open wounds. But if he doesn’t, fans took to Twitter to express their appreciate for a man who spent nearly 40 years in the ring before going out on top.