This day in wrestling history is a good one as it helped give a boost to two greats that have captured fans’ imaginations for years, and it all started with their name change to the Blade Runners in Memphis.
Initially, Steve Borden (Sting) and Jim Hellwig (Ultimate Warrior) started as a quartet called Powerteam USA with Garland Donoho and Mark Miller rounding them out and Rick Bassman managing them for their debut in 1985.
Donoho and Miller eventually left, and Warrior and Sting worked in Jerry Jarrett’s Continental Wrestling Association where they were renamed the Freedom Fighters and then the Blade Runners under the guidance of Dutch Mantell.
They were notoriously stiff as they were body builders at the time and their training wasn’t complete, so their time in Memphis was short.
This is where history gets a little entangled as Joe Laurinaitis (Animal) from the Road Warriors write in his autobiography, The Road Warriors: Danger, Death, and the Rush of Wrestling, that Bill Watts actually named them the Blade Runners and brought them into Mid-South Wrestling as a parody of the Road Warriors.
This does make sense as they changed their name shortly before joining the new territory, but we’re going to leave the ins and out to those that were there.
Arrival in Mid-South Wrestling and the end of the Blade Runners
When they arrived in Biill Watts’ Mid-South Wrestling, things started to get interesting for the duo, and within six months they were no longer a team.
Warrior talked about how their tag team and his friendship with Sting ended on The Ultimate Warrior Shoot Interview DVD in 2005.
Special thanks to @awrestlinghistorian for the transcript.
“They gave us Eddie Gilbert and Eddie was a company man. He believed in not ruffling any feathers and doing what they told him to do. And that was okay up to a certain point with me, but when it didn’t make sense anymore, I didn’t have the personality to take it. I didn’t like to be handled that way. And Steve (Sting) liked to be handled and have his hand held and taken into what to do.
“And there was one instance where we’re in the locker room, Bill Wats came back and ordered me to get down on all fours. He wanted to show me how to work a kick he said into the ribs. I already heard the story that what he does is he gets the talent down into a disadvantageous position and then he doesn’t work the kick, he really throws it in and tried to break your ribs.
“And I told him that if he wanted me to go down on all fours then he was going to have to put me down and everybody in the locker room was really stunned. And later of course, after he had left and didn’t take me up on my challenge, Eddie chastised us: ‘You’re not going to go very far in the business if you continue to do that.’ And Steve didn’t speak up.
And we swore… that we were going to stand back to back in this business; that if we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it together as a team and he didn’t say anything. He sort of sided with Eddie in that.”
Just like that, things between them changed and their friendship was over. While it would’ve been awesome to see what they could’ve accomplished together, there’s no denying the impact that had on professional wrestling individually.
A cool history note is how they’re the only former tag team to win world championships in separate companies in the same year with the Ultimate Warrior winning the WWF World Heavyweight Championship in 1991 and Sting winning the NWA World Heavyweight Championship later that year.
This day in wrestling history did more than introduce this pair to us, it gave them the launching pad into becoming legends.
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