Sting’s CAC Iron Mike Mazurki Award acceptance speech

On Tuesday, August 20, 2024, Steve Borden — who wrestled as Sting — was presented with the Cauliflower Alley Club’s Iron Mike Mazurki Award during the first night of its annual banquet. It is the top award in the pro wrestling industry and is named after the club’s founder.

Below is a transcript of his speech, including the introduction by Lex Luger, delivered at the Plaza Hotel & Casino in downtown Las Vegas, slightly edited for clarity with a few editor’s notes about the asides. For details on the rest of the awards that night, see Sting proves to be a perfect, pious headliner at CAC.

After rolling himself up the ramp set up at the right side of the stage, Lex Luger (Larry Pfohl) launched into a combination introduction and confessional for his friend, Sting.

“This is such an honor and privilege. It’s my first time with the Cauliflower Alley Club. Just [CAC President] Brian [Blair], incredible stuff at work here. I saw a glimpse behind the scenes today, the preparation, all the work you guys put in for such an incredible cause. I’m really touched. Thank you for all that you do,” began Luger. “Everybody here, that’s attending and supporting, this is a great, we could do a lot of great things for a lot of wrestlers. So thank you so much.”

He switched gears to Sting:

We can go on and on about Sting’s accomplishments in the ring. I’m just keeping it brief … the presentation of what his friendship has meant to him and I, behind the scenes, outside of the ring.

We both came in at the same time, rose up together. We we were tag partners. We were road partners on the road. We became business partners. We opened gyms together. We became neighbors. We bought houses in the same neighborhood, we raised our families together. I mean, words can’t describe our nearly 40-year friendship that we shared.

The only, I would say, fracture, in our friendship, happened in 1998. As close as we were, because I thought Sting deserted me. He decided that, he announced to me that he had got saved, that Jesus had become his Lord and Savior. I was actually angry with him.

I grew up unchurched church, and I thought I lost my best friend to religion. I was angry with him. We didn’t go to same places together anymore, we didn’t do the same things that we always did. I was upset with him.

I went one path. He went another. I went down some very dark paths, made some really bad life choices. My personal life had become a train wreck after that period of 1998.

When I think about it, the choices I made, when we make choices like that, not many times, we hurt people who love us the most. I reached a point in my life where I was in and out of jail, I had hundreds of hours of community service to do, and I didn’t have a driver’s license so I had to live in a hotel room near where I did my community service. It was at an animal shelter. The judge made sure I didn’t skip out easy on my community service, so I had 500 hours to clean out dog and cat cages at the county shelter outside of Atlanta. I was always a dog guy, but man those cats, they could be nasty. I hated getting cats out of that cage. Wow. Anyways, I digress.

But there was one person in my life. I’d reached a point where I’d go clean out the dog cages and cat cages, and back to my hotel room and just get high and really didn’t care about what was next for me. That’s where my life had gone to.

But there’s one person, people tried to reach out to me back then, but I wouldn’t take their calls, because that’s where I was at. But Sting would call me, back in the day of voicemails. He’d go, “Hey, Larry” — my name’s Larry — “it’s Steve. I know you’re not going to pick up the phone. I’m going to tell you to hang in there and I love you.” …

I used to play that over and over again at that time of my life.

About back in ’06, my last time in jail, thankfully, I met a jail chaplain named Steve — I’ve got a lot of Steves in my life — who, to fast forward shortly thereafter, in that hotel room that I probably could have OD’d on that couch so many times, looking back now, the hand of God in my life. Pastor Steve came to my hotel room, and shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with me. I got down my knees, went over that couch, and asked Jesus to be my Lord and Savior, and my life was immediately transformed after that.

Before I came here, I was looking for a picture, and I don’t know if we have it or not, but I got saved April, 23 of ’06, and a month later, in May, I went to a conference and my public profession my faith, to wrap it all together, was Stinger, Steve, baptizing me at that conference. … The hand of God brought us full circle in our lives, in our relationship together. It’s truly amazing, and I’m so thankful for his friendship and so thrilled that I’ve got the opportunity here …

We shared a lot of highs and a lot of great times in wrestling, but nothing, nothing matters in our lives here. I always say we hear about being friends for life, now I know that we’re going to be friends for eternity.

So with no further ado, I want to bring up my best friend in the world and the recipient of the incredible Iron Mike Mazurki Award, Sting.

Sting, without any face paint or a baseball bat, was the main event of the evening. He spoke almost exactly for 15 minutes.

“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Wow, man, thank you. Lex. It’s been a long night, I promise I’m not going to take too long. I have a notebook that has all 40 years of my career …” he started off, garnering some laughter. There was also a rogue cell phone left on the podium, which he noted, promising to return it to its owner later.

During his speech, Sting made reference to many of the other honorees from the 2024 class of the CAC, including Kurt Angle, the Dudley Boys and Buff Bagwell, as well as co-emcee Madusa (Debrah Miceili).

Oh, man, it’s great to be here with all of you tonight and I’m so humbled to be acknowledged with a lot of my old running buddies. Lex, good to see you, Bubba, D-von, or Devon. Kurt’s not here, but man, Kurt as well. Madusa, everybody. I mean, very humbling. And Brian [Blair], where are you? Brian, right there. You know what? I never got to know you too well, but over the last couple months, we’ve had some great conversations. I’ve really enjoyed them. I want to keep that going. Anyone out here have a family member or friend who has a voicemail on their phone that when you call them and you hear the automated system, and it says, “Hello!”

I hate that.

Debrah. Debrah, Yes.

“Hello, hi.”

“Hi Debrah.”

Then the automated thing goes on and you feel like an idiot. You’ve got to do something about that, Debrah.

How about my presenter, The Total Package, Lex Luger?

Then Sting launched into the meat of his acceptance speech.

So, I was really thinking about this, and, you know, I was asked to be a part of this, obviously. And I thought, how, after 40 years, after all that I’ve done, how did I end up here? And to receive the Iron Mike Mazurki Award to boot?

The only way to answer that question is to kind of go back in time — don’t worry, it’ll be brief history.

So a history with Lex, Kurt, Bubba, all my buddies. Anyone remember the Lex and Sting versus the Steiner Brothers in 1991? …

Kurt Angle is not here, as I already said, but, you know, I think about Kurt Angle and all the great matches that I had with him, and I think if anyone were to look in the dictionary for pro wrestling, what would it mean, or what would it say? It would just be a picture of Kurt. He is the most well-rounded wrestler ever in pro wrestling. Olympic gold medalist, amateur wrestler. A lot of the Olympic guys and amateur wrestler guys couldn’t figure out pro wrestling, the NFL guys, they couldn’t figure it out. But Kurt figured it out, for sure. So Main Event Mafia, we’re family, right, Kurt, wherever you are? He was truly a machine.

Bubba and D-Von, my buddies, man, did you guys ever win Match of the Year, by the way?

Bubba Dudley chimed in from the audience: “Twice!”

Twice. I knew it. You guys were a great tag team. You might have won against us, because [Lex] would have left and it would have been you guys against me.

Marcus Bagwell, where are you? Marcus.

Marcus, do you remember being at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago? I got there early. You got there early. I’m in the dressing room. You come walking in. “Oh, Sting. I’m sorry. It’s your room. I’ll go down the hall.” I said, “No, come on in. You can you can dress right here. Yeah, that’s no problem.”

You’re like, “Can you help me out with the Total Package, with the Steiners? Because they hate me.”

“What do you mean they hate you?”

“Sting, they I hate me. Please say something to them.”

Which I did. We broke the ice that night. Everybody, we were like, gosh, travelled up and down the roads constantly, all of us together, the Steiner brothers, Marcus, Lex, me, inseparable. Marcus later became Buff, as you know. Top hat. So many good memories.

I had a great run with TNA, evolved into the Joker character, which was hit and miss here in the United States, but man, it was great in Europe.

I did my WrestleMania thing, Triple H, Levi Stadium, Seth Rollins, World title match.

And then for about five years, it’s like, Okay, what’s what’s next? What am I going to do? I thought it was pretty much done.

And then I got a call from Tony Khan and Cody Rhodes. Text messages from them. “Do you want to come back and play for a little while longer?” I thought, You know how old I am now? They said, “We do. It’s okay.”

I said, “You know, what about the fans? What about the wrestlers? What about the young talent in the back?”

Tony knew that I was somewhat reluctant, and so he came up with the idea to do cinematic matches only. So I signed a multi-year deal to do cinematic matches only.

We get to Rome, Georgia, to film the first one that I did — the only one I did. [Revolution 2021, Sting & Darby Allin vs Team Taz (Ricky Starks & Brian Cage) in a Street Fight] Yeah, two all-nighters of filming, which, by the way, the wrestling sequence that we filmed was after two nights, the very last thing that we filmed … I mean, it was brutal.

Halfway through, Cody says, “Sting, your kinetic energy is off the scale still. I mean, you still got it. You can do this.”

“No. Bless your heart. Don’t start.”

“Tony agrees. Darby agrees.”

It’s like, “No, I can’t do that.”

Next scene, we’ve restructured my deal. Next scene, I’m jumping off of balconies and ladders. A lot of you might think that Darby was the cause for that, or the reason, the instigator behind that. It wasn’t Darby. It was actually Bubba and D-Von.

No, seriously, I walked into the arenas and looked at the balconies, I’d look at the set, and I’d go, “Oh, I could come off right here, I could jump off right there, could go right tables right there.” Only had one fail in all the jumps off and through tables; that was in Toronto. I had Sammy Guevara on the table, on the floor, ladder set up inside the ring, I’m on the top, flying up with Darby at the same time. “Darby, I’ve got this.” I jumped off the ladder, gained a little bit, caused my mouth to collide with Sammy’s knee, bashed in my tooth, caved in my lip. Came back to the dressing room, the doctor says, “Sting, you’re gonna need some plastic surgery on that.”

I got no sympathy from Booker T on that. Anyone see all the stuff he was writing during that time? “Sting doesn’t need to be doing that anymore. At this time in his career, why is he doing that?” I thought, the first time I get a chance, I’m going to jump off a balcony, go through some tables and pop up to my feet, no sell, beat on my chest, looking at the camera, and say, “Can you dig that, sucka?”

I told that to Booker, we talked about it, we all laughed. It was great. I love Booker.

I did realize too that if you fans did not want to play anymore — Tony asked me if I wanted to come back and play — if you guys didn’t want to play, I stood no chance, and I knew that. I also realized that the wrestlers in the back, if they didn’t want to play, all the young talent back there, I stood no chance. All the producers, directors, the network, everybody, the people behind the scenes, but it seemed like everybody was pretty much on board.

So I quickly had to learn who my go-to people were going to be if I was going to step into this thing for a full-time deal. A guy named Charles Hartman, who understood me and understood my character, the Sting character, and he had my back. I couldn’t have done it, I didn’t stand a chance without a Charles Hartman. Darby, who knew my strengths, my weaknesses, and had my back and made my last run so darn and fun. …

Without Darby as my tag team partner. I stood no chance, and I knew that. Tony Khan, who allowed me to go out on my own terms, the way I wanted to go out, with the exception of one thing — Old Man Sting.

I wanted to retire as Old Man Sting.

You’ve got Surfer Sting, Crow Sting, Wolf Pack Sting, Joker Sting, Modern Day Crow Sting, and I wanted to finish with Old Man Sting. And what I mean by that is kind of like a Clint Eastwood, you know, from Unforgiven. I never did see the movie, but the scene where he’s, you know, the guy that did all the spaghetti westerns and shot all the bad guys up, and he’s the aged guy now, and he sets the can up on top of the post out there, and he takes his six shooter out, he shoots six rounds, and he misses the can, he misses the posts, and he casually, with that iconic Clint Eastwood stare, goes back into the house, grabs a shotgun and blows the can off and blows the post off. He was getting the job done, just in a different way, and I wanted to do the same thing.

You got all the chaos happening out there in the ring, and here comes Old Man Sting, grey-haired, with my cane, which is my bat, and as all the chaos is going on, make my way down to the ring, climb up the balcony, jump off and go through some tables — still getting the job done.

Tony, why didn’t you let me do that?

You know, Bubba, I’m not like you. That was supposed to be funny, c’mon!

Clash of Champions, 1988 Greensboro, North Carolina, World title match against Ric Flair, that is the match that put me on the map.

Fast forward almost four decades, Revolution 2024, Greensboro, North Carolina, once again, Ric by my side and … that was my last match. It was the final Showtime.

And I’ve got to tell you the 90 days or so, maybe even more than that, leading up to Revolution, it was rough, very rough for me, and I was feeling my age coming in big time. I had some fears. Some of those fears were like, you know, laying in bed at night in the hotel room, am I going to embarrass myself? Am I going to embarrass the whole company, AEW? Will I embarrass Tony Khan? Darby? Matt and Nick, the Young Bucks? Garrett and Steven, my two sons? All you fans? …

You guys would say stuff like, “Gosh, it just passed me by. You should have got out when he had the chance.” But every one of you gave me a chance, even though I had all the support from all of you, I still felt like I stood no chance. I mean, I really thought I couldn’t do this.

But then, God. I’d say, “God, please, please help me to finish strong.” And He came through every single time, and I realized I did have a chance. I do have a chance.

Then, after four decades of all the big matches, all the big names, all the big titles, Revolution was the highlight of my career. Young Bucks. Darby, thank you, Bucks, and the fact that I had both of my sons involved in it all still blows my mind. Garrett is Surfer Sting, my oldest son, which, by the way, did you not think that was me for a couple seconds? Steven as Wolfpack Sting. And for the record, God did answer my prayers. He did help me to finish strong. He helped all of us that night.

Anything good that ever came out of me came straight from God, all glory to Him.

Many of you do know probably that at the very peak of my career, August of ’98, somewhere around there, I was going through some stuff. I was addicted to painkillers, muscle relaxers, alcohol, carousing, infidelity, women, the whole package. I had a trail of blood symbolically on my hands a mile long, a mile wide behind me, and I had to deal with the consequences from all of these choices. It was a real pivotal time in my life. I was either going to continue doing life my way, or I was going to bow to the King of Kings.

August of 1998, I surrendered my will to the will of Jesus Christ, I became Born Again, and Jesus became my Lord and my Savior, and I’ve never looked back.

If you’re still not sure about me, I can give you my worldview and more words in the beginning, God, that’s me. Romans, 3:10, in our Bibles, says there’s an unrighteous, not even one, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

I thought I was a good person, a good husband, a good father. I was earning a great paycheck. We had money in the bank. We had investments, real estate all over the place. I mean, I was a great provider.

But I finally did realize that I wasn’t such a good person and that I needed a Savior.

Romans 6:23, the wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ, Jesus our Lord.

Romans 5:8 says God demonstrates His own love toward us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 10:9 says, If you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised you from the dead, you will be saved.

Last one, 2nd Corinthians, 5:21, He made Him who knew no sin to be sin, made Him who knew no sin — meaning Jesus — who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we may become the righteousness in Him. That means Jesus took my sin and imputed it onto himself, and he took his righteousness and imputed it onto me.

Bottom line is, apart from Him, in this life, I stood no chance. But with Him, all things are possible. In Him, we can have life and life more abundant. In Him, we can have the peace that surpasses all understanding.

So to answer that question, how did I get here after four decades? I’d say only by the grace of God. …

Why did I end up here? If for nothing else that you could hear from a regular guy named Steve Borden, who was once lost and is now found, to say that God loved the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son that whomever would believe on Him would not perish, but have eternal life.

And I want all of you to have the same [faith] that I have, and many others in here have, and you know who you are, and I want to thank you all. Thank you for giving me another chance. I love you.

TOP PHOTO: Sting (Steve Borden) on the stage, receiving the Iron Mike Mazurki Award at the Cauliflower Alley Club reunion at the Plaza Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas on Tuesday, August 20, 2024. Photo by Scott Romer

RELATED LINKS

• • Sting story archive
  • Cauliflower Alley Club story archive
  • Cauliflower Alley Club website