Tonight was of course Sting’s final appearance as a wrestler on “Dynamite,” and commentary certainly told you that throughout the night if you had missed it all over social media the past week. What I thought was strange and didn’t exactly love on the show, however, was the extreme lack of Sting throughout the entire night, up until honestly the last possible second at 10 p.m., with very little overrun on the show. We saw more of the Young Bucks throughout the night, but if AEW was going to hype up this final appearance of Sting on television, why not show HIM more? We know the match against the Bucks is coming, and the show still could have ended the way it did with them brawling, but I think their segments should have been replaced with Sting and Darby Allin.

I will admit, I am a clock-watcher when it comes to wrestling shows, and not in a bad way, just because I find it very interesting which segments air at what time. By 9:30 p.m., we had only had two segments even alluding to Sting on the night. What made it all even more ridiculous was that after the Jericho match, Excalibur did his thing of running down not just the entire Revolution card, but “AEW Rampage” and “AEW Collision” for this week, as well. With my eye on the clock, all I could think was, “Where the heck is Sting?! We’re really doing this instead, now?!” We got our answer at the last possible second. Allin got involved with Matthew and Nicholas, who brought out Ric Flair. Flair, as we all assumed, turned on the Bucks when they asked him to beat up on Allin with a baseball bat, and Flair got his own beatdown after he took some cheap shots at them. Flair in the ring to begin with is uncomfortable for many reasons – here, being the fact he can barely move, and certainly shouldn’t be taken any kind of beatdown.

It was only then that Sting’s music hit, and the Bucks headed up the ramp with their bats to meet him on the stage for the confrontation. Sting didn’t come out from the back, however, but descended from the rafters, WCW-style. And to that, I say, “Why now?!” Why not save that spot for Revolution itself? Now, if he and Allin do it on Sunday, it’s kind of like, “Oh, we just saw that. Cool.” The visual of Sting storming out from the back with his baseball bat and just wailing on the Bucks would have been effective for TV, saving the rappelling from up above for the big pay-per-view.

The ending was fine and I probably would have liked it had it not been hyped up as such a big deal that it was Sting’s final “Dynamite.” To me, it kind of seemed lackluster only having him on the show at the very end, for maybe five minutes tops. Of course, I wouldn’t want him to take any big bumps ahead of his final match with Allin against the Bucks on Sunday so he didn’t get hurt, but even just seeing him throughout the night in any capacity would have made a little more sense to me. Maybe even a short segment of him confronting Flair about visiting the Bucks while he was off TV last week, to add some extra drama to the show and the story of the upcoming match. Anything more than what we actually got. If you’re not watching Revolution, this was your last chance to see Sting, and I think a lot more could have been done to make the fans watching at home happy.

Written by Daisy Ruth