The weekly professional wrestling roundup

Welcome fans, to the inaugural Wrestling Roundup. Every Thursday, get your fill of the week's events coupled with some obligatory thoughts on the current state of wrestling.

The best way to kick off this column is to tie in wrestling with a local angle. This week, it was Sting paying Long Beach a visit.

The World Championship Wrestling superstar schmoozed with fans and signed autographs on Saturday at the Long Beach Arena. The publicity was for kicking off ticket sales for the Oct. 3 Thunder taping at the downtown arena.

The fan turnout was impressive.

Really, any wrestler with the international exposure WCW offers may be able to draw a crowd. But when you look at the Stinger's career, he is still one of the most popular wrestlers out of Atlanta.

Sting has been on the top of the WCW heap for over a decade.   From the young, charismatic blonde with Day Glo tights and matching face paint to the somber, bat-wielding impersonation of Eric Draven from "The Crow," Sting has been WCW's most consistent performer.

His tenure in WCW is respectable. He has held the world championship seven times, the United States championship twice, the television championship once, and the Tag Team championship three times with three different partners.

Sting is also a loyal WCW employee. He stayed with the federation through its glory days, the late 1980s and the first New World Order era from 1996 to 1998, and its doldrums, 1993 and the current tailspin WCW is experiencing. Even stalwarts like Lex Luger and Ric Flair bailed to the World Wrestling Federation for brief periods, but Sting stayed where he became a legend.

But Sting's best quality is not popularity, marketability or even reliability. It's masochism. Not only has he endured the physical punishment of wrestling with numerous injuries while on the road for extended periods, he has endured the psychological torment of inane booking.

In 1990, there was the infamous Black Scorpion fiasco, where a demented magician tormented the Stinger for months. In 1993, Sting challenged Vader several times, once in the "White Castle of Fear." The two confronted each other in a cheesy B-movie aired in episodic vignettes, all to build up to their main event battle at Superbrawl III.

This year Sting feuded with Vampiro, a short-time friend turned bitter foe. Vampiro set "Sting," obviously a stuntman thanks to poor production, on fire. Prior to this, Vampiro had gallons of a red syrup cascade from the ceiling and drench Sting, allegedly to symbolize blood.

Worst of all, he was demoted from WCW's top draw to second banana in the mid-1990s, when the powers that be in Atlanta decided the best way to rejuvenate the federation was to bring in WWF stars such as Hulk Hogan, "Macho Man" Randy Savage, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash.

While WCW was beating rival WWF in television ratings and fan interest for two straight years due to the success of the NOW, where was Sting in all of this? He spent over a year in total silence, watching wrestlers ominously from the arenas' rafters.

This only made Sting more captivating. The transition to the Crow character was complete, and by not giving a single interview and threatening wrestlers with bats, Sting reached new heights of popularity.

Unfortunately, he did not necessarily become the top dog. WCW had an extensive payroll, with many superstars' egos to placate. Sting's title reigns were short and insignificant, and he had to share the spotlight with a very large roster.

Despite handling that would have destroyed a normal man's career or sanity, Sting somehow survived.

He is a little older, a step slower and has less stamina than he had a decade ago, but fans don't seem to care. This is why he still draws crowds like he did here in Long Beach. Until next week, fans, keep watching.

Chris Ledermuller is a print journalism major .