It sounds like Sting will retire in 2023 after his AEW contract expires

Sting recently revealed that he’s planning the end of his pro wrestling career.

During an interview with D Magazine, the 63-year-old AEW star made it clear that he is trying to find the perfect ending to ride off into the sunset on a high note. In some ways, it sounds awfully similar to the Undertaker’s Last Ride in WWE.

Based on the publication’s wording, the end of Sting’s legendary career will happen in 2023. His contract is up sometime this year, and he’s going to say goodbye after that:

“[Sting] won’t allow himself to rest. Not yet. He is chasing the one thing that keeps eluding him in his wrestling twilight: a final act. The right performance to cap off a storied career. A moment, a storyline—something—constructed with his bosses at AEW to bring him fulfillment. And until he attains it, he’ll keep pushing himself further than any wrestler his age ever has.”

“...ever since [Sting] returned to the ring in March 2021, following a five-and-a-half-year hiatus, he has upped the ante, continually testing the limits of what his sexagenarian body can take. Intellectually, he embraces the concessions he must make to age: a lower spot in the company hierarchy, the end of energy-sapping one-on-one contests. That doesn’t help him sleep better on the nights after he wrestles, when he replays sequences in his mind and pries at the weak points in his performance.”

“His wife worries. So do some of his friends. But they’re also curious. They, too, wonder how Sting’s story ends...[he] knows only that it’s soon. His deal with AEW expires sometime this year; he won’t say exactly when. When it ends, so will his time behind the face paint.”

“Whatever I do, I want wrestling fans to say, ‘That was incredible,’” he says. “I don’t want them to walk away going, ‘That was embarrassing.’ I just want it to be a great memory and then to just finally, once and for all, say, ‘Adios.’”

Sting admits that he already thought he reached the end of the road during a match at Arthur Ashe Stadium in September 2021 when his body refused to move in the ways that he needed it to during a tag team match with FTR.

It’s worth noting that Sting debuted with AEW at Winter is Coming in December 2020, and that’s when he signed a multi-year contract. Does that mean his contract will expire in December 2023?

The bottom line is that the clock is ticking on Sting’s pro wrestling career, and it sounds like he will call it quits this year. Are you ready to say goodbye, Cagesiders?