@Hanley!
I can see your point about a star not necessarily = a draw and I'm glad you made it. We agree that Lesnar breaking The Streak has increased his drawing power and Sting's booking has decreased his. But my opinion is that their drawing power has not been affected to the extent you claim it has. That's where we disagree and that's where I feel like you're overreacting.
The facts you mentioned to back up your Lesnar argument do not necessarily prove your point. Out of curiosity, I did some digging around
of my own: Summerslam 2012 did 358,000 buys compared to 296,000 in 2011. Extreme Rules 2012 also did better than the previous year. Extreme Rules 2013 didn't do as well as the previous year's, yes, but it still did better than every PPV in the preceding 12 months except Summerslam, Royal Rumble, and Wrestlemania. True, Summerslam 2013 didn't draw as much as the previous year did but I'm not sure how you could spin that as being Lesnar's fault. It was a much better card due to Bryan/Cena main eventing and Lesnar/Punk, with Lesnar/Punk being Lesnar's best feud and most anticipated match up to that point. There must have been other reasons as to why it didn't outdraw the 2012 show.
Lesnar
was a big ratings
draw before breaking The Streak, at least according to these sites. Anyhow, there's not much solid evidence to support your claim that Lesnar became a draw
only after beating Undertaker/Cena, and was not one prior to that.
Now back to the Sting discussion. I disagree that he hasn't been presented as a big star to the casual WWE viewer. Upon his debut, he was immediately inserted into the biggest storyline in the company against one of, if not the company's biggest heel in Triple H. This also had the effect of instantly elevating Sting to super babyface status by opposing The Authority when nobody else could, and securing victory for the good guys Survivor Series team. Sting proceeded to get the upper hand on Triple H throughout their entire feud leading up to Wrestlemania, and then matched Triple H blow-for-blow in their match, getting the upper hand before DX interfered. He kicked out of both a Pedigree and Sweet Chin Music, and was about to win the match before getting blindsided with a sledgehammer.
What I had a problem with was everything that happened
after the match - the handshake and Sting's promo on Raw the next night. But it didn't make Sting look weak as a competitor. It didn't change the fact that he was about to beat Triple H, someone who has always been presented as being super strong. Someone who almost broke The Streak. I read a lot of posts on the internet from people who thought Sting would be some slow, plodding old guy who couldn't move very fast in the ring, but his physical condition and performance in the HHH match impressed them a lot.
Sting's next appearance was attacking the WWE Champion in the closing segment of Raw and then being made the #1 contender for the world championship at Night of Champions. Despite the head-scratching booking involved there, the fact is that Sting was once again elevated to an extremely prominent position on the roster and the marketing for Night of Champions was focused on him. He also made Seth Rollins tap out in a match on Raw and was able to take down Big Show before their match ended in a DQ.
Sting dominated Rollins at Night of Champions until Rollins found himself in a lucky position and shoved Sting back through the announce table. At that point they were evenly matched, but Sting was still able to hold his own. Then Sting suffered a very serious injury which almost knocked him out of the match. Even after that, he returned to the fight and applied the Scorpion Deathlock twice before Rollins rolled him up. I don't really see how this match made Sting look weak either, and keep in mind that the actual finish probably wasn't the planned finish. I bet the planned finish had Rollins cheating to retain the belt. Also, once again I saw a lot of posts praising Sting's performance, people who expected the match to be worse/shorter than it ended up being.
Despite the problems with his character booking and his 2-2 record, casual fans see Sting as someone who can hang with top-level wrestlers like Triple H and the WWE Champion. That's impressive for a 56 year old man who many people saw as some broken down has-been prior to Wrestlemania 31. When you add the fact that commentators always refer to Sting as a 6-time WCW Champion, "one of the greatest of all time", and the most popular wrestler at the time when WCW was kicking WWE's ass, I still don't see how he has not been presented as a big star... or as someone who can't hold his own against 2015 Undertaker.
The losses could have hurt Sting's drawing power for some, but I don't think that's going to matter if he has only one more, final match against The Undertaker. The misconception I keep seeing here is people looking at Sting vs Taker like it's a Streak match. It's not. The story isn't "can Sting beat the Undertaker?" The match can be built/promoted as a double retirement for two veterans who have only more big fight left in them, and they just want to face each other because that's the match the fans wanted and chanted for. In a scenario like that, Sting's win/loss record wouldn't matter all that much.
I don't know if Cena/Taker is bigger than Taker/Sting on paper. It could have been a huge Streak match years ago when Cena was at his most unstoppable. In current times it doesn't look all that interesting, mostly because Cena is always in varying degrees of staleness and there's nothing he really does that we haven't seen before. If WWE put their marketing machine behind Taker/Sting and really sold WHY it is a dream match, it could be bigger. A point I made earlier (which you ignored) was that Sting does have elements to his character that are similar to the Undertaker's; we've seen them on display during Sting's WWE run. They can be emphasized further in their feud.
While you can list maybe one or two other options for Taker's final opponent, it's certainly debatable whether they would draw more than a match against Sting. On the other hand, it's not debatable that the biggest thing left for Sting to do is face The Undertaker. It's a huge part of why people wanted him in WWE in the first place. We never got Hogan/Austin. We never got HBK/Rock. Sting/Taker still has a chance of happening, so it'd be a real shame if it was added to that list. It's the most WWE can get out of Stinger after all they have invested in him up to this point.
