NWO Sting Says Gimmick Was Eric Bischoff’s Brainchild, Talks Transformation Into The Character

When a man’s heart is full of deceit. It burns up, dies. And a dark shadow falls over his soul. From the ashes of a once great man, has risen a curse. The prevailer of good. With a voice of silence. And a mission of justice. This is not Sting. This is NWO Sting.

NWO Sting proved to be a recurring and significant character on WCW programming in the 1990s. Jeff Farmer, formerly known as Cobra, found himself a good role as a bogus Sting. On a recent 83 Weeks With Eric Bischoff Podcast, Bischoff joked that he would need to track down Jeff Farmer to see whose idea the gimmick was.

Fightful did track him down, and Farmer gave all the credit to Bischoff. 

“That was Eric Bischoff, actually, who had the idea,” Farmer admitted. “You’d have to ask him about where they kinda came up with it. But, Eric approached me and came up with the idea, and said if it gets out he was gonna squash it. So, he wanted to make sure that no one knew that it was me as the double. I think a lot of that just had to do with Steve [Borden] and I were similar size. I was doing Cobra at the time, he asked me to do this and I said, “Whatever.” So I did it.”

There were plenty of changes that Farmer had to undergo, even though he was very similar physically to Steve Borden, who portrayed Sting. It wasn’t that easy at first.

“Yeah, at first they used, actually, prosthetics. So, they had a company that came out—I think AFX or something was the name of it. I wore contacts ‘cause I have light eyes and Steve had dark eyes. But, it was very problematic. It was hard to wrestle when I’m not used to contacts. But, eventually we dropped that off and with the paint you couldn’t really tell that much. So, I had to grow my hair out a little bit and try to make some changes from Cobra. But, it was fine,” said Farmer

“Yeah, that first one they asked me to paint that way. I wore the white tights and wore the kind of beach thing. So, definitely was different. Then they wanted to transition. I was just going along with whatever they told me to do,” Farmer said, complimenting our recollection of the happenings.

Though he’s best known for his spot as NWO Sting, Farmer fondly remembers an earlier spot in his career that helped land him in WCW. While he’d go on to have an outstanding run in New Japan Pro Wrestling, he does wish his time in WCW could have led to a little more. 

“You know, I really liked starting out with my best friend Clark Haynes when we were Thunder & Lightning,” Farmer told us, as he signed a stack of 8x10s. “We really thought it was a great WWF type gimmick at the time with the capes and the whole thing. So, that was very special for me. Cobra was kind of interesting, and I think there could have been stuff that was done with that character if they would have done it right. Of course, even the NWO Sting they never really got a chance for, I think Sting and I could have had an amazing run as against each other, like arch (rivals). We were just blessed to be a part of that. We were really at the pinnacle, I think, of the wrestling in New Japan at that time. Maybe it has its resurgence now, which is great to see. But, back then it was pretty exciting.”

Nowadays, Farmer is largely off the map, saying “I’m trying to be low key. I’m not any kind of social media guy. I just like to hang out and go fishing and do that kind of stuff.”

You can see our full interview with Farmer at the top of the page.