Talk about it here.

Madusa is the first one to come out of the box, and she dances very suggestively with Sting in all sorts of positions to imply that she is going to give him a blowjob. Jim Ross makes sure to point out how she has Sting's "full attention", and then Lex Luger comes out of the box and clips Sting's knee. He attacks the wrong knee initially and Sting has to correct him in a funny moment. At least they paid off the angle with a reveal that didn't feel too anti-climatic, even though they obviously could have done more with it.

Sting gets a gift of a dozen sweaty muscular guys. He needs a prize! Oh Madusa pops out of the box . And crawls on her knees towards Sting. Looks like she wants the stinger after all. Tony holds the mic up the whole time why Madusa gropes Sting. Luger ends up hitting Sting from behind. That was out of nowhere.

Just when you think the box angle has been forgotten, Sting is out to receive what he is told is his final box. A bunch of bodybuilders bring out a Middle Eastern-looking caravan, and out steps a belly-dancing Madusa, who evidently has more interest in Sting's Stinger than she let on. We're approaching the end of the year and we've come full circle with facepainted babyfaces being propositioned by female managers. Lex Luger clips Sting from behind and takes apart his bad knee. Good payoff. The fact that Luger vs. Sting has gotten no lip service at all has felt weird, and this is a good way to re-ignite a match-up that every WCW fan really wanted to see and also put it off at the same time, as Sting will have to deal with the re-injured knee as well as Rick Rude first.

 

Am I imagining this or did Jake Roberts not ultimately take credit for the boxes ten months later?

The one thing I hate about this angle is that Madusa was already a heel aligned with Rick Rude. Even by Sting standards, he's pretty dumb here.

Sting is easily swayed as Warrior was able to resist Sherri at the RUmble but Sting gives into temptation here. The attack by Luger is pretty good and sets up the show long angle.

Luger as the sender of the boxes was a good thought, but there's been no build to it, not even a hint. Is this supposed to mean that Cactus and Abby were working for him the whole time? Has Heyman been in on it? If so, was he responsible for hooking Luger up with Race and Hughes in the first place?

 

It's a pretty safe bet that none of the above questions entered Dusty's mind for a minute. The truth most likely is that he wanted to run Sting/Luger on pay-per-view, and this is the start of the buildup to it. Okay, but then why bother to bring Rude in and feud him specifically with Sting? Even if you want him to take the U.S. belt, why? Wouldn't a matchup of the reigning U.S. champion against the reigning World champion generate more interest, similar to what happened with Hogan/Warrior at Mania VI? I know that we like to see guys handle more than one feud at a time, but the Stinger still has to finish up with Cactus and Abby, and the issue with Rude's barely even begun. There's such a thing as feud overload, and right now I think Sting has it.

 

I don't fault Sting for paying attention to Medusa; name me a red-blooded male who wouldn't, even if she was working for his sworn enemies. But did he have to act so thrilled? Did he really think that Medusa had reformed, or was he just so horny that he couldn't have cared less? Fun-loving Sting is one thing; hormone-crazed middle school punk Sting I can do without very nicely.

 

I couldn't tell that Luger attacked the wrong knee, but does it really make a difference? No matter which knee you bang off of a heavy wooden platform, there's going to be significant damage. In fact, I'd have probably told Luger to go for Sting's good right knee if I were Dusty; one wrong bump on the repaired one and we're talking the legit end of a career.

I think the thinking was they could run an angle like this as an excuse to keep Lex back in the shadows, since they were pretty much out of allowable dates on his contract with him. Rude was there because Sting still needed something to do, and further Dusty was more about overlapping feuds than Vince ever was.

 

Of course, about 10 months after this, there's another twist yet in the mystery box angle.

I forgot about Lex only wanting to work so many dates a year. It kind of makes you wonder why they put the belt on him in the first place; he'd have been better off as a face challenger to a heel Windham, although Barry hasn't missed a beat as a face since the Bash. On the other hand, from all I've heard Vince is in a similar position with Brock Lesnar today, and he works harder than Lex ever did when he's on a show, looking like a monster and popping crowds wherever he goes. So far, Harley and Hughes have both worked circles around Lex, who looked like the blown-up musclehead he's always been against Simmons and really hasn't done much at all outside of a few half-decent beatdowns of Windham right after his turn. He was much better as the face U.S. champion in my book.

 

Thanks for the info, Pete!

It wasn't so much that he only *wanted* to work so many dates per year. It's that the terms of his contract were that he worked x number of dates and if he exceeded it, they had to pay him more. Because WCW was poorly managed, they ran through most of those dates way before the year was up, then didn't want to pay him to work extra dates. The same thing happened to Sting in 1996, which is why they ad-libbed the angle that took him out of the ring for over a year.

So that's how we got Crow Sting! I never knew that.

 

Thanks, Loss!

This angle confirms for me that Sting is indeed a 12 year old boy in the body of a grown man. Madusa was pretty hot though, so I guess.