After news broke that Ted Turner had passed on Wednesday, AEW announced that night’s episode on “Dynamite,” which airs on TBS, the network Turner founded, would be dedicated to Turner’s memory. That proved to be accurate, as “Dynamite” opened with a moving tribute to the former WCW owner, with former WCW star Sting and WCW announcer Tony Schiavone each speaking about Turner and his importance to the wrestling business.
The sudden appearance of Sting had many believing that AEW flew in the wrestling legend on short notice in order to pull the tribute off. However, Dave Meltzer would reveal on “Wrestling Observer Radio” that while AEW owner Tony Khan did re-write some of the show in order to include the Turner tribute, Sting was already going to be in the North Charleston, South Carolina area for the show anyway.
“Sting was actually not brought in for this show,” Meltzer said. “Sting was…the plan was for Sting to come in and do promotional work in Charleston because they felt, you know, they’re in the Carolinas and Sting started early in his career working in that territory. So they flew Sting in to do media and stuff. And Sting himself asked when he got there, or even before, he goes ‘I don’t want to be on the show because it’s not my time anymore. I don’t want to take time away from anybody else. I don’t want to be on the show.’
“Then Ted Turner dies, he’s there, and Tony basically rewrites much of the show, because he felt they needed to open the show, and he had changed things around and everything. And he wanted Tony Schiavone and Sting to do the tribute to Ted Turner, which Sting was happy to do. And it was completely unscripted in the sense, and you could tell watching it. Like, they just went out there and they winged it. I thought it was very well done.”
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit “Wrestling Observer Radio” and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription
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