I’ve been watching pro wrestling for a long time. A long, long time. Many of you reading these words right now weren’t even born yet when I first laid my eyes on the sport.
In all that time, I’ve obviously seen a million rookies and young talents come along with varying degrees of hype. Some of them were lucky enough to live up to that hype, and maybe even exceed it, while the rest of them were some sort of disappointment.
Something I haven’t seen very often, though… and maybe not at all… is what we’re currently experiencing with Steven Borden, aka the youngest son of pro wrestling icon Sting.
The first thing I’ve noticed is just how much women and gay men love the guy. Look… it’s not exactly a secret that there are a lot of people who watch pro wrestling to see attractive people. That goes with watching television shows, movies, music videos, and so on. Some people might take it too far, but it’s something just about all of us are guilty of from time-to-time. Whether it’s Roman Reigns, Tiffany Stratton, Sol Ruca, Will Ospreay, Becky Lynch, Andrade, or others… you’ll have wrestlers you think are hot, and you’ll pay extra attention when they’re on-screen.
With Steven Borden, though, I continue to see comments, tweets, and posts about him that are completely out of pocket. On just about every social media site you can think of, you’ll see random people talking about how attractive they think he is. However, you’re also going to see random people talking about certain… things… that he does to their bodies when they see him, or particular… things… that they’d like to do to his body, or even particular… things… that they’d like him to do to their bodies.
I know it might be a tad upsetting, but I won’t be talking about much of that over the rest of this column. What he and I would do if we were trapped in an elevator together is something I’ll keep between myself and my therapist, thank you very much. I’d like to focus more on what he does inside of wrestling rings.
When this column goes live to the world, we’ll be about a week shy of the one-year anniversary of Steven’s in-ring debut. In that year span, we have now seen him wrestle on AEW television twice, and on AEW pay-per-view once. Now, he does have a total of 27 dark matches that he has wrestled for AEW since he started working for them in mid-December 2025, but the point I’m making is that he remains as green as goose shit.
You know… like every other wrestler throughout the history of the sport is when they’re at this stage of their development. Kurt Angle is usually talked about when you discuss people who “picked up” the sport quicker than just about anyone else, but if you’re going by the time frame of Steven Borden’s career, Kurt would’ve been two months away from even making his on-screen debut at this point.
When I watch him work, one thing stands out to me above all else…
He’s not ready for this role, and if we’re going to be honest with each other, it isn’t even close.
Please don’t get me wrong… Steven Borden LOOKS like a pro wrestler. It helps that he looks exactly like his father did when he was younger, but even besides the facial replication, Steven is listed as being 6’3″ tall and weighing 246 pounds, which is essentially the same size as someone like Gunther, but Steven looks like he’s chiseled out of granite. His father came to pro wrestling with a bodybuilding background, and if you look at Sting from 1992 and 1993, when he was the same age that Steven is today, he had a great physique… but when you compare 1992/1993 Sting to 2026 Steven Borden, Sting might as well be Bastion Booger.
Steven is j-a-c-k-e-d. He’s someone that would pass the infamous “airport test” that Vince McMahon used to love so much… where you could see Steven walking through an airport, and even if you didn’t watch wrestling at all, you’d look at him and know he was someone special. If you saw him, you would automatically assume he was some sort of athlete or actor or something that doesn’t have him working in an office cubicle from nine-to-five every weekday.
He’s also someone that has a ton of tremendous athletic ability. Have you ever seen the man throw a dropkick? The list of wrestlers who have thrown a better looking dropkick is a pretty short one. He has that 6’3″ height, and he gets some serious air beneath him when he jumps. It looks great.
The problem is that the praise pretty much ends there.
He has a world of possible potential, but as of right now… very late-September 2026… he still has a lot of work that he needs to do.
That isn’t a knock on him at all. I’m not expecting him to wrestle like prime Shawn Michaels at this stage of his career. He still has a lot of work that he needs to do, and he SHOULD have a lot of work that he needs to do.
Outside of his athletic ability, he’s still working on the basics of in-ring work. He wrestles like someone who isn’t even a year into his career, because he is someone who isn’t even a year into his career. I’m not going to sit here and say that he “sucks” or that he “can’t work.” He’s just someone that is clearly still learning behind-the-scenes.
Obviously, Steven Borden is in the position he’s in because of who his father is. If his name was Steven Harris, Steven Maldonado, or Steven Craig, with the exact same look and the exact same physical traits and attributes, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now because he wouldn’t be on AEW programming right now. Chances are, he wouldn’t even be in the wrestling business right now.
I say that because the man is 34 years old, and for someone to be starting their pro wrestling trek at that age is incredibly rare. When it comes to late arrivals to wrestling, you usually think of Diamond Dallas Page, who started wrestling for WCW when he was 35 years old. DDP’s journey was slightly different, though. He was a wrestler in his early-20s, but retired due to a knee injury, only to return to the sport at 31, working as a manager for over three years before getting in the ring.
Steven Borden, even with his father’s legacy in the business, basically walked in off the street and is now on national television on a weekly basis a year later. Throughout the history of pro wrestling, there haven’t been many people who can say they’ve done something like that at this age, and those who can make that claim almost always came to wrestling after excelling in something like pro football, MMA, or some other professional sport.
If you’d like to play Devil’s Advocate here, you could say that Steven’s age is probably playing a huge part in him being “rushed” to this position. He’s 34 right now. Do you let him go the “normal” route, having him grind it out and hustle on the independent scene, finally having him debut as a 36-year-old? A 37-year-old? A 40-year-old? He might not have the same amount of time left that a lot of these kids do when they first start their wrestling careers, so how much can you truly fault Tony Khan and AEW for wanting to take advantage of the time they feel they have left with him?
Do I think Sting has anything to do with where his son is right now? Directly? No. Indirectly? Perhaps. I certainly don’t know for sure, but I just can’t picture Sting strong-arming Tony Khan into signing Steven and then putting Steven in a position on television before he’s “ready.” What I can picture, however, is Tony Khan loving Sting so much, and appreciating what Sting did in AEW so much, that he was more than happy to take a chance on Sting’s son, when perhaps other promotions of that type of stature through the years wouldn’t roll the dice like that. Not only does that make a lot of sense to me, but I probably would’ve done the same thing if I were Tony Khan in that situation.
I do have some issues with the way Steven is being used on AEW programming. The connection with Darby Allin obviously makes a ton of sense, and it’s a logical choice, but I do worry that the pairing with Darby is something that could eventually work against Steven.
Doing the same thing with Darby that Sting did with Darby is a good way to get those cute nostalgia reactions from AEW fans, but Steven’s going to continue getting heavily compared to his father, and at some point, that could backfire. If he’s not on the same level as his father, and he most certainly won’t be at this early stage of his career, then when does the crowd reaction become “well, maybe he isn’t so special, after all?” People are already expecting to see Darby and Steven win the AEW Tag Team Titles at some point sooner than later, just like Sting and Darby did. It could be argued that they’d be the #1 Contenders for those AEW Tag Team Titles right this minute if not for Steven’s unfortunate injury at All Out a couple nights ago.
Actually, since that was brought up, let me discuss the All Out injury for a moment.
Since it happened, I’ve seen a lot of “that’s what happens when you put someone in the ring who isn’t ready to be there” talk from people. Okay, so… yes… someone who isn’t very good in the ring, either through inexperience or general horribleness, is more likely to hurt themselves or their opponents during matches. That’s common sense. However, when you’re attempting high spots in a wrestling match, the risks of an injury shoot through the roof. Remember, it wasn’t very long ago that Seth Rollins attempted a coast-to-coast move, just like Steven Borden tried All Out, and Seth landed wrong, tearing his rotator cuff and putting him on the shelf for over four months. It happens.
Now, in the interest of fairness, Steven absolutely, positively jumped to perform his springboard move way too early. He took off, and there was a shot where you could see him halfway across the ring already while Kevin Knight literally still had part of his foot on the top rope before fully taking off for his own springboard move. That part can be placed squarely on him, but the rest of it was just an accident. A very unfortunate, scary looking accident.
I do think that Steven and Darby were originally going to win the match, just based on the parallels that AEW is trying to do with them and the pairing of Darby and Sting, but life has other plans sometimes. We’ll have to wait and see how serious his injury was, and how long it might keep him out of action.
Anyway, the bottom line is that it is really cool to see Sting’s son following in his footsteps, especially because he does look so much like younger Sting. It’s also something I feel has a lot of flaws involved, and flaws that are somewhat easily preventable on top of that. It would be a phenomenal story to see him continue picking things up, piece-by-piece, and going on to become the AEW World Champion one day. I just have a lot of concerns with the path he’s currently on, and where that path looks like it could be taking him.
If this were another time period, one potential solution to his biggest problem would be a house show circuit. Can you imagine if AEW had at least one house show event every week where Steven could get his reps in and gain experience without having to do it on live television in front of hundreds of thousands of fans every week?
Another potential solution would be something like WWE has with their Performance Center. It’s one thing to have business relationships, either official or unofficial, with different training schools. You can even have him working directly with wrestlers like Fred Rosser (aka WWE’s Darren Young), who have been training him privately. Having a dedicated place like the Performance Center, with state-of-the-art everything and teams of coaches and trainers to work with him every single day, would do wonders for the guy.
While I know it isn’t an exact comparison, I can’t help but think of a similar story when I think of the hype that Steven Borden has been receiving… Hook. Like Steven Borden, Hook was someone who showed up on the scene in AEW due to his famous father (Taz, for those of you not paying attention to anything), and who also captured the hearts of women and gay men all across the wrestling fandom. There was so much buzz around Hook that I wrote a column about him in December 2021 after he made his in-ring debut for AEW, comparing THAT to the in-ring debut of Dominik Mysterio that took place the previous year. Hook went from “he’s got future AEW World Champion written all over him” to being “just another guy” over time. Does Steven Borden have the same future in him? Time will tell, of course, but it’s worth pointing out that we’ve seen this story in AEW before.
What are your thoughts on Steven Borden? Do you see him as someone that can eventually go on to become an AEW World Champion, or do you think the hype will eventually fizzle out? As always, feel free to hit me up in the comments section below, on Twitter (@HustleTheSavage), or on Bluesky (@aaronhyden.bsky.social), and let me know what’s on your mind.
Now, let’s get to my Weekly Power Rankings, and then we’ll close things out with the list of songs I was listening to as I put this column together.
Weekly Power Rankings
Benjamin Satterley: Rest in peace, Pac. Truly one of the more stunning bits of news in recent wrestling history.
Swerve Strickland, Kofi & Austin Creed vs “Hangman” Adam Page, Brody King & Bandido: A super fun Trios Title match that told two different stories, which I appreciated. You had Hangman and Swerve trying to destroy each other at every possible chance they got, but you had their partners trying to rein them in before their tempers cost their teams the match.
Kazuchika Okada vs Tommaso Ciampa: Two grizzled veterans taking the pain to each other in a title match on pay-per-view. Sometimes, a lengthy backstory isn’t needed to be successful.
Adam Copeland & Christian Cage vs FTR vs The Young Bucks: It was these six particular wrestlers in a Ladder Match. You knew what you were going to get going in, and that’s exactly what you ended up getting. Obviously, based on where it lands on this list, that isn’t a complaint on my part.
MJF: I’m doing my annual column that does a deep dive on the PWI 500, and it’ll hopefully go live to the world next week, but for now, congratulations to the man who earned the #1 spot on this year’s edition of the PWI 500.
Will Ospreay vs Jon Moxley: This was a lot of fun, but if there was anything really holding it back from being even better, it’s the fact that there was zero mystery surrounding the outcome. After everything we got at All In(nit) with Ospreay winning the AEW World Title, he simply wasn’t going to turn around and drop the title a couple weeks later, no matter who his opponent was.
Penta vs Dragon Lee vs Dominik Mysterio: Another great Money In The Bank qualifying match in what has become a pretty long string of them. As I’ve said a million times, it’s amazing what can happen when you give wrestlers something to compete for, instead of just putting them in random matches with nothing on the line.
Andrade El Idolo vs Pac: I watched this match and typed out a review for it as it happened, and then, just 24 hours later, Pac was dead. Folks, make sure the people you love know that you love them. You just never know if you’ll lose the opportunity to tell them.
CM Punk vs Gunther vs Finn Balor: Oh, hey, another entertaining Money In The Bank qualifying match, adding to the long list of them. Works for me.
Jamie Hayter & Alex Windsor vs Megan Bayne & Lena Kross: One thing I appreciate about women’s “hardcore” matches in AEW is that they don’t hold back. It isn’t having women take it easy because they still have to be “pretty” out there. No, they’re beating the hell out of each other, taking insane bumps, and bleeding a bunch, just like the men do in their “hardcore” matches. This was no exception.
Swerve Strickland, Kofi & Austin Creed vs Ricochet, Toa Liona & Bishop Kaun: Swerve, Kofi, and Creed are doing a really good job as the Trios Champions, and they continue to carry on the legacy of the division.
Iyo Sky vs Roxanne Perez vs La Catalina: *ahem* Yet another entertaining Money In The Bank qualifying match. This year’s matches have almost all featured three names that you could make logical cases for them winning the qualifiers, which is really nice.
Samoa Joe: He’s back! Good! AEW is a better overall product when Joe is around. Now, if he can just make the product even better by getting rid of Jack Perry.
Rayo & Bravo vs Noam Dar & Romeo Moreno: It wasn’t a Money In The Bank qualifying match, but it was a first round bout in the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, so there was still something on the line. Both teams stepped their game up here.
Will Ospreay & “Speedball” Mike Bailey vs Claudio Castagnoli & Gabe Kidd: With this, and with All Out over, I really hope we don’t have to see Ospreay and the Death Riders tangle anymore. Actually, as some are wondering, do you even have the Death Riders anymore after what happened to Pac? Some are of the thinking that a name like “Death Riders” might be a little insensitive in the wake of Pac’s passing.
Trick Williams vs Baron Corbin: Trick wins the blowoff match in their feud, and it was the best match they’ve had together. Now, get Corbin out of the way. Send him to Evolve or something so I don’t have to see him anymore.
La Catalina & Thea Hail vs Kelani Jordan & Zaria: I will never complain about seeing La Catalina on my television, and that’s especially so when she appears on my television multiple times in the same week. More, please.
This Week’s Playlist: “The Way It Goes” by Leon Bridges… “Take My Hand” by Leon Bridges… “Please Don’t Say Goodbye” by Leon Bridges… “Locked Up In Mexico” by Tee Grizzley… “Roses” by CHVRCHES… “Love Me” by From Ashes To New… “What’s It Gonna Take?” by Amaria… “Decimate” by Maeta… “King Without A Crown” by Matisyahu… “Send My Love” by Born Jamericans… “Turn Your Lights Down Low” by Bob Marley & Lauryn Hill… “Come On Over” by Fiji… “Pualena” by Vika… “Missing You” by Luckie D… “Love Me” by Fia… “Perfect To Me” by Josh Tatofi… “Before I Let You Go” by Blackstreet… “Murder” by UGK… “Feel Me Flow” by Naughty By Nature… “Meal Ticket” by Master P, UGK, 8Ball & MJG… “Situation On Dirty” by Brotha Lynch Hung… “Come On” by E-40 & B-Legit… “How Ya Do Dat” by Young Bleed, Master P & C-Loc… “Don’t Mess Around” by Mr. Serv-On & Big Ed… “If I Could Change” by Master P & Steady Mobb’n… “Faces Of Death” by E-A-Ski… “Pushin’ Inside You” by Sons Of Funk… “Murder Murder” by Ghetto Twiinz… “Burbons and Lacs” by Master P, Silkk The Shocker & Lil Gotti… “We Riders” by Master P & Mac
