When Hogan’s NWO began to break apart in 1998, the look of Borden’s character changed once again. When Nash and Savage split from the original faction and formed the NWO Wolfpac, Sting joined them as well. He appeared to have joined Hogan’s heel faction at the time when he appeared wearing a black and white NWO shirt, but tore it off to reveal the Wolfpac’s signature black and red. While involved with the stable, Sting started to wear red and black face paint.

Sting didn’t stay in his black and red Wolfpac-inspired face paint for long, however. He was taken out at Halloween Havoc by Bret Hart. The two were feuding over their similar finishers, Sting’s Scorpion Deathlock versus Hart’s Sharpshooter, and Hart took Sting out with a baseball bat. Sting was on the shelf for several months. When he returned to “WCW Nitro” in March 1999, the NWO storylines had faded and he was not brought back to any of its iterations. Sting returned to the company as his “Crow” character, once again sporting black and white face paint, with the NWO Wolfpac simply a memory and notch in his career full of transformations.

In 2001, Sting had a transformation of a different kind in his career, with WWE’s Vince McMahon purchasing WCW. WWE chose not to buy out Sting’s contract, and he also rejected a buyout offer from Time Warner, opting to wait for his WCW contract to expire in March 2002. Sting decided not to join WWE and went on a hiatus for almost two years, before joining World Wrestling All-Stars for a short stint.