When Sting was introduced at Survivor Series 2014 it appeared his mission would be stop the Authority's endless run on top of the company. The WWE booked him in a match at WM31 against HHH. The stage seemed to be set, but the WWE put HHH over. Since then, the Authority angle has sputtered and the ratings of Raw have followed suit. The decision to pin Sting has devalued his drawing power and the WWE has missed its chance to use him to add some Network subs and better viewership.
To first understand why this was such a big mistake you first have realize why the WWE decided to have HHH win. Their motivation in having HHH go over was not just Vince wanting to stick it to Sting, as he has so many former WCW stars. Instead it was the belief that the Authority was going to be rejuventated coming out of WM31 with Seth Rollins as Champion.
With Rollins setup as the Champion the WWE wanted to position the Authority in a position of power. This would also help keep HHH and Steph looking strong for a match they are going to promote for WM32 possibly involving the Rock and Rhonda Rousey. The WWE was going all in on the Authority angle.
This was fools gold in all reality. The WWE had done far too much damage to Seth Rollins leading up to WM31 including having him lose to Randy Orton clean earlier in the show. If they wanted to have Rollins hot as Champion despite all the poor booking they had a chance the next night with having him rematch Lesnar, but likely due to the constraints of the Lesnar deal the WWE opted to only tease the match.
Since then Rollins has lost clean on Raw to Dean Ambrose in a non-title match. He's needed massive amounts of help to retain the title at Extreme Rules and Payback. At the Elimination Chamber he lost by DQ, but has not has his title belt because Ambrose stole it. So basically Seth Rollins has been made out to look weak.
Rollins is not must see TV the same way Kevin Owens and John Cena have been the past few weeks. He's floundering as champion and that's not his fault. The booking team and Vince have botched the Rollins push. They should have never teased the Lesnar match. Also they should have avoided having Rollins compete on any show after winning the title that was not a network special (or PPV if you still consider them that). When Rollins did compete he needed to look strong and win. While some level of interefernce in him doing so is acceptable, he needed ot win clean more often than not because of the amount of losses he took prior to him winning the title.
Winning and losing has been a hot topic with WWE for the past few years. The company has been of the view that it isn't a big deal anymore and have kept much of the midcard at a .500 record, but in a society that demands so much of it's sports teams, winning is everything. The WWE is fooling themselves with the notion that winning isn't important to the success of a star.
So, where does Sting figure into this equation. Sting was beaten by HHH at WM31 to help protect the Authority angle. If HHH lost and the Authority was percieved to have been beaten then the angle would have less value in the eyes of the WWE creative staff. With Rollins being the planned champion later that night and the match the WWE might be shooting for with HHH at WM32 Sting was sacrificed.
The immediate value of Sting plummented. He had come to WWE on a mission and he failed. The WWE paid little mind to this fact. The next night on RAW the WWE held back Sting's appearance until after the show, and in a mostly forgetable segment where Sting got the better of a returning Bo Dallas. From HHH to Bo Dallas?
If Sting had beaten HHH the next night on Raw he could have come out and challenged the Undertaker for WM32. The match would have some teeth because Sting and Taker would be coming off wins. Sting could have announcd that the following year would be his retirement tour culiminating in that WM32 match.
While the WWE could rely on Brock Lesnar to push their major PPV events like Summerslam and Survivor Series, Sting could have been used to fill in the gaps. They could have slated him for some fun dream matchs like Sting versus John Cena, or possibly Daniel Bryan. There were at least five or six good options to utiltize Sting in compelling matches that could have boosted some of the lesser valued PPV's WWE has throughout the year.
In most cases it probably would have made sense for Sting to win those matches. The value of him performing would have bolstered Network interest and if he was used sporadically on Raw it would also help ratings. As was proven prior to WM31 for the few times he did appear.
The WWE could have had a solid one year with Sting and built to a great match at WM32, but going the way they did he's lost a lot of shine. He's had no appearances and few mentions since the night after WM31. The question is why? The WWE has been starved for interest and buzz to the point that they are bringing back Lesnar sooner than planned to help ratings.
The rumor is Lesnar will not only compete on the Japan special, but also Battleground later that month before getting his title rematch at Summerslam. If you insert Sting into the Japan special against Jericho would that not have created a big enough buzz? How about Sting against John Cena at Battleground? (A welcomed break from Owens to keep that feud hot.)
There's no question that Lesnar is the bigger draw at this point, but there would have been major value for Sting in those spots had he beaten HHH as he should have. Instead the Authority angle is in a sputter, Raw is lacking a reason to watch outside of Cena and Owens, and Sting is nowhere to be found.
Perhaps the WWE is hoping to keep him away so that people will forget about his defeat and they can bring him back strong. Regardless this was a bad booking decision and now the WWE is going to rely heavily on their big guns to win back interest. This could have all been avoided had they made the right booking.
Fans have to hope that this wasn't HHH behind the scenes politiking for the win. He's had a bad history of that through the years. In the end the WWE still has the chance to get some mileage out of Sting, but they need to be wiser in the future regarding these situations.